The Gall Stone of Doom
by Zikare
Summary: Jasper pukes up a gall stone, leading to the ultimate Cullen/Volturi showdown. Vampires vomit up eggs that hatch into baby vampires after a bout of human parasitism. BTW vampire genetics is explained in ch.16. Canon. Full summary inside
1. Prologue

Author's Note:

This story, and me, as an author, have been nominated for multiple Emerging Swan Awards (open 9/12/12)! Please vote: emergingswanawards (d0t)

Thank you so much to anyone who is kind enough to vote for me and whoever nominated me. It means so much to me that you readers value my story enough to take the time out to nominate me!

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Prologue:

Jasper's POV-

I have given a lot of thought as to how I might die. I have had a lot of time to think about it, over a thousand years. I would like to go down fighting, defending those I love. That seems an honorable death to me. And after a thousand years of existence, I might even be ready for such a fate. I would gladly make the trade if only it meant my loved ones would be safe. But this is not the case: they will die with me.

I cannot bring myself to regret the decisions I have made that have brought me face to face with death. That have led me to the point where I am cowering in the living room waiting for impending doom. I would defy the Volturi again, if given the chance. The parasites are the best thing that has ever happened to me, besides Alice.

It seems wrong to be in here, letting my friends and family fight and die in my defense. I should be out there fighting, defending my family from the Volturi. But instead I sit here on the couch while the Volturi invade our arctic island sanctuary.

We traveled to the furthest reaches of the globe and built our home in the most remote region possible, all in the name of Volturi evasion. We cloaked ourselves in Bella's shield to hide from Demetri. But it has all been for naught as we have been found.

As I cower the Volturi's helicopters approach our island, penetrating our defenses. If only I was on the front line, fighting for our safety, I would feel so much more productive. But that is a job anyone can do and only I, with my empathy, can do this one.

I send out a wave of calm, infused with mischievousness, playfulness, and happiness, my name for Ashley, Alice's parasite. I can feel the tension, fear, and horror in response as the war rages on around us. There is no need for words, because we can communicate with our emotions. Having an empath for a daughter means protecting her from the feelings of others, because she is too young to cope with the constant onslaught herself. The task is arduous, taxing, and nightmarish as I try to control the emotional atmosphere to which she is exposed.

When Alice and I met, I never once considered the possibility that we would someday have children. But then I also was unaware of the fact that we, as vampires, lay eggs. For centuries these eggs were thrown away, thought to be useless gall stones. And without a human to parasitize, they never developed. But Alice had seen the truth and had known what to do when our first eggs emerged.

The rest of our family stood by us as Alice and I implanted our eggs into human hosts to germinate. They were even there when our eggs hatched, killing their hosts in the process. But then, they were going through the same thing themselves with their own eggs. And now we had an entire house full of demonic spawn to guard and keep safe.

But back to the task at hand: the Volturi are attacking and the emotions are too much for my empathic daughter. I send out another wave of calm, this time infused with stoicism, determination, and contentment, my name for Scryan, my own blood sucker, calling his attention to me. I decide on a course of action where I ask for a future where the emotions are bearable.

Scryan's eyes lose focus as his vision transports him to the future and my request, before returning to the present. He nods in acknowledgement and then shrugs, letting the feeling of hopelessness waft off of him. My request must not be a possibility: he can only influence the future, bending it to his whim, not change it completely.

Hopelessness, now there's an emotion I can relate to. If only there was something physical I could do. Even Alice and my other daughter Allison are manning the guns so to speak. If only I could join them, then I would at least feel like I was doing something productive.

But there is something I can do. I send another wave of calm throughout the room, infusing it with confidence and determination. If only I could extrude hope. It is the hardest emotion for me to feel. I will have to extract it from someone else. There is only one person present that will do: Alice's other leech Jackson. Like his mother, Jackson could be hopeful down to the bitter end.

I send out waves of love, calmness, and contentment, calling Jackson. He nods at me, knowing what I need immediately. I can feel the hope radiate off of him and quickly imbibe the feeling into my being. I amplify it and radiate it back out. Hope, such a glorious feeling. Maybe the hope will help Ashley get through this ordeal.


	2. Summary

The Gall Stone of Doom Summary

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*Contains Spoilers*

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Dedication: This story is dedicated to drasticity, deltagirl74, my other readers, and everyone who has ever written a fanfic about a vampire getting pregnant or having a baby.

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Hypothesis: Vampires are capable of vertical inheritance.

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Category: After finishing this story, I have come to realize that it is a Sci-fi comedy, so I have moved it accordingly.

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Objectives:

1. Get Jasper knocked up at least three times in one story. Why? Because it is _not_ nearly as funny to knock up any of the other vampires. And since female vampires are just as hard to knock up as males, might as well go all the way and choose Jasper. Covered in Ch.1, Ch.3, Ch.11, and Ch.32.

2. Knock up all the other Cullens while I am at in. Why? Because I can't think of a good reason why Jasper would be any more knocked up than the rest of them. Maybe Emmett would be… but Emmett is not as funny. Covered in Ch.3 (Alice), Ch.4 (Alice), Ch.7 (Edward and Bella), Ch.8 (Esme and Carlisle), Ch.10 (Emmett and Rosalie), Ch. 11 (Alice), Ch.19 (Emmett), and Ch.20 (Esme).

3. Accuse Edward of having a sexual relationship with his piano and bring up this accusation as many times as possible without Bella finding out. Covered in Ch.5, Ch.6, Ch.8., and Ch.24. Can you point out any additional places to bring up this accusation? I'd love to hear 'em.

4. End in a war between the Cullens and the Volturi, because the Volturi think Carlisle is lying about vampires laying eggs. Why? Because it is the funniest reason for a war I can think of. You got a funnier one? Covered in Ch.31.

5. Explain vampire genetics, using plasmids, in a way that is one hundred percent compatible with _everything_ ever said by Stephenie Meyer about vampires. Covered in Ch.16.

6. Explain how vampires can reproduce vertically without violating the "vampires cannot change" law of vampiredom. Covered in Ch.3 and Ch.16.

7. Make entire story one hundred percent biologically accurate, despite the vampires. Why? Because I'm a biologist. All biology mentioned in this story is so true that it can be looked up on Wikipedia or Google Scholar. If something doesn't jive with your high school bio class, it's your bio class that had it wrong. Trust me, I have taught and graded a ton of undergraduate bio classes, from intro to cell to micro.

8. Tell a bunch of Cullenesque stories and make it funny, cause Zikare's Razor is that which is funniest is best. Covered in most chapters.

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List of New Characters- Many people have told me that it is hard to keep track of all the new characters, so here is a list to refer back to as you are reading, in case you forget.

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New Cullens:

Allison Cullen Whitlock- Jasper's egg. Nickname: Ali. Powers: All-knowing.

Jackson Cullen Whitlock- Alice's egg. Nickname: 'Son. Powers: Can see the past.

Elizabeth Marie Masen Cullen- Edward's egg. Nickname: Eliza. Powers: Can read every thought you have had without touch and mild shield.

Edward Anthony Masen Cullen III- Bella's egg. Nickname Masen or 'Asen. Powers: Edward style mind-reading, telepathy, moderate shield (can shield others when touching).

Aiden Cullen- Carlisle's egg. Powers: Can will peace into existence over short distances.

Carlisle Cullen II- Esme's egg. Nickname: Carl. Powers: Healing.

Lily Rosalie Hale- Rosalie's egg. Powers: physical shield.

Angel Rose Hale- Emmett's egg. Powers: venom burn.

Ashley Cullen Whitlock- Alice's egg. Nickname: Ash. Powers: extreme empath.

Scryan Cullen Whitlock- Jasper's egg. Nickname: Scry. Powers: extreme psychic.

Violet Emma Hale- Emmett's egg. Nickname: Vi. Powers: too beautiful to look at.

Adriel Cullen- Esme's egg. Powers: bend the laws of physics.

Zakaira Abaeterno Cullen Whitlock- Jasper's egg (identical twin of Kare). Nickname: Kair. Powers: travels forward in time.

Zikare Abantiquo Cullen Whitlock- Jasper's egg (identical twin of Kair). Nickname: Kare. Powers: travels backward in time.

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Jacob's pack:

Jacob- Nessie

Leah- Nahuel

Seth- Iracema (Nahuel's younger half sister).

Embrey- Mirelli (Nahuel's older half sister).

Quil*- Clair*

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Denali Coven:

Tanya- Jason

Kate- Garrett

Eleazar- Carmen

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Amazonian Coven:

Huilen (Nahuel Aunt)- Jose

Kachiri- Enrique

Senna- Josue

Zafrina- Fernando

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Irish Coven:

Maggie- Sean

David- Caroline

Siobhan- Liam

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Romanian Coven:

Vladimir

Stefan

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Egyptian Coven:

Amun*- Kebi*

Maurice*- Sonja*

Name unknown*- Name unknown*

Benjamin- Tia

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Nomads:

Peter- Charlotte

Randall

Mary

Allistair

Charles- Makenna

Fred (from the short second life of Bree Tanner)- Macy

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*Deceased, meaning that there will be character deaths. Consider yourself warned.


	3. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Edwards Point Of View (All chapters are from Edward's POV unless otherwise stated)-

set in 2048

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Today was Alice and Jasper's anniversary. Normally, I make it a point to be as far away from my siblings as possible during their anniversaries- I really do _not_ like to over hear those thoughts. Normally, Alice and Jasper would be in Las Vegas by now, but not this year. This was their one hundredth anniversary, and Alice had foreseen that Jasper would vomit up his pearly white gall stone exactly on their anniversary, just like Emmett had; Rosalie had followed suit with one of her own only days later.

Eighteen years ago, Carlisle and Esme had each vomited up one marble-sized gall stone in the months following their hundredth anniversary. They were the first in our family to do so and that was the first we had all heard about the stones. We were quite shocked until Eleazar explained that it happened to every vampiric couple…it just was not the type of thing talked about it polite company.

When we kiss, we swallow some of our partner's venom. We cannot recycle it like our own, nor excrete it as waste like humans. So, like a pearl, the venom coats a small particle, one layer at a time, until a large harder than diamond gall stone is formed. After a hundred years of this, the stone is so large that it is puked up. I guess it is better than vomiting up a teaspoon of venom after every kiss, but still, I was standing outside contemplating how disgusting it will be in sixty years when it is my turn. Yuck!

Carlisle was at the hospital, working the evening shift. Esme was in her office, working on a set of blue prints for the house her new company was putting up. Renesmee was in La Push with Jacob. And, Bella and Rosalie were attempting to give Jasper some privacy. They both knew him well enough to know that he would rather be alone right now.

Bella and Rose had bonded over Nessie's birth, and had since discovered killer robot fighting. Rose would use her super awesome mechanical skills to build the bots, and Bella would use her engineering degree to design them. I could hear them on the other side of the house turning on the mobile table saw that was the robot's arm. They were making some fine-tuned adjustments. Bella seemed to find robot fighting to the death exhilarating. Who am I to argue? If it makes Bella happy, I am game. And now that she is circular saw proof, there really was no hazard in robot wars.

Alice was thinking about the vision again. She was sure that it was only a matter of hours now…if that. We had moved outside out of respect for Esme's house. No one wanted to clean the animal blood off of the carpet; the carpet had to be replaced after Carlisle's stone was passed. After all, the stone does not come up by itself- the entire stomach contents are disgorged.

Emmett was trying to distract Jasper from the impending doom. He had brought out their four chess boards, preserving the positions of each piece from the game they had been playing for a week now. This was not the way Emmett would want to spend an anniversary. He empathized with Jasper, because it was only thirteen years ago that this had been Emmett.

Jasper was trying to keep up his spirits, playing along with Emmett. But, for the first time in his one hundred eighty-five years of being a vampire, Jasper felt sick. He felt queasy and he was running a slight fever. He was not as warm as a werewolf, or even a human, but he was burning up by vampiric standards. He hated all of this attention, because it made him feel weak. He did not want Alice to worry over him. He moved one of his three remaining knights as he kept the atmosphere around him calm.

Alice was calm. But no amount of calm could keep her from worrying about Jasper, especially knowing she was next. She was thinking about what she could do to make it easier for him. 'Hold his hair back? Would that be too embarrassing?' She decided she would try it. She searched the future for a vision. He seemed fine with her holding his hair back as he retched into one of Esme's old five-gallon paint buckets. 'A bucket! That will help.' She looked at me and thought, 'Would you get the bucket?'

I nodded in assent and was back with the bucket in a flash. I smiled at her as I put it down next to Jasper's seat. He was looking even paler than before.

Alice was still worrying, 'He'll need to hunt after disgorging his stomach contents. Will he be thirsty right away? Or will he feel sick for a while afterwards?' She decided she would take him hunting as soon as he cleaned up. She searched his future for the hunting trip… but she could not see it. 'It must not be meant to happen right afterwards.

'Maybe Jasper will need the night to recuperate.' She decided she would take him hunting in the morning. 'Surely he'll be fine by the morning?' She searched the future for a hunting trip tomorrow morning. 'A grizzly and three deer!' That made her feel better. 'He'll be fine by the morning. Well, fine enough to hunt. Does the experience leave one emotionally scarred for life?'

I wanted to reassure Alice that Jasper would be fine. But, I knew she did not want him to know how worried she was. Not that it mattered, he could feel the worry coming off of her. I shook my head, ever so slightly, to indicate that Rosalie, Emmett, Carlisle, and Esme were all just fine afterwards. Hopefully the gesture was discreet enough to not call Jasper's attention to us.

I thought about saying the words out loud and Alice searched for the future where I would say them. She found it, and was somewhat placated. A small amount of hopefulness started to radiate out from her. Not enough that I would have been able to tell, but I could feel it indirectly via Jasper's thoughts.

Alice's hopefulness gave Jasper the courage to continue. He really wanted to get through this with a brave face on, but he just had a thought that really bothered him. 'It'll be Alice next. How will I comfort her when she's the one bent over the paint bucket of doom?' Just the thought was enough to make his stomach heave.

"It's time," Alice called in her high ringing wind-chime voice. She handed the bucket to Jasper and went to hold his hair back.

A few moments later Jasper was staring at the round blood smeared ball in his hands. I was thinking about whether I would want to keep mine and Bella's like Esme and Carlisle had, or toss them like Emmett and Rosalie. Maybe keep Bella's and toss mine. After all, if it was made in Bella's body it was precious, right? But mine was made from Bella's venom, surely her venom is precious as well…maybe we should keep both. Put them on the shelf over the mantle- a symbol of a hundred years of un-dying love.

Looking at the white stone triggered one of Alice's visions. I figured it would be about a make-up anniversary night in the near future, so I was trying to divert my thoughts. Think about Bella. Would she want to look at the stones on the mantle? Maybe she would see them as horrible reminders of the vomiting.

So I was a little surprised when I noticed Alice's thoughts, 'Not a stone, an egg! A female vampiric embryo wrapped in a protective shell'.

I turned to face Alice and placed my hands on her shoulders to watch the rest of her vision unfold. The embryo was female with long wavy black hair. Jasper would name her Allison, as in Alice Jr.. And she would be talented! Wow! What the Volturi would do to get their hands on such a talent. An all-knowing vampire. And I thought Alice with her visions was annoyingly right, but Allison really would know everything.

"Allison," Alice said staring in awe of the egg as she refocused her sight after the vision.

Jasper's jaw dropped as he felt the emotions emanating from Alice. He could tell she loved the stone. She would die to protect it. He was confused. 'It is just a stone, isn't it?' "Alice, what is it?"

"An egg," Alice and I said in unison.

"What're you guys talking about? Vampires don't lay eggs." Emmett's booming laugh echoed across the lawn.

"What do we do with it?" Jasper asked staring in awe of the egg.

Alice searched the future for the answer. No vampire alive knew what to do with a vampiric egg. 'Putting them on a bookcase like Carlisle and Esme was not the right answer. Their eggs had never hatched. Did vampiric eggs hatch? Maybe they need to be kept warm.

'No.' Allison was all-knowing. She knew she was an egg, not a stone. She knew about the life cycle of a vampire. And in a true bout of tautological reasoning, since Allison knew, she would one day decide to tell Alice. And since Alice could see the future, she would know how to germinate the egg to produce the vampire who knew how to germinate vampiric eggs. Alice just had to search for the day.

'Parasites.' Jacob and his pack had called us parasites. This is truer than any of us ever knew. 'The egg has to be swallowed by a human, which it then parasitizes- drinks from- for another hundred years. The baby vampire chews its way out, killing the ancient human.

'It isn't all bad for the human. A hundred years is a long time to live for a human, especially in the olden days before the knowledge of the vampiric life cycle was lost. During all that time the vampiric fetus protects the host from bacterial and viral infections, as well as death from old age and genetic diseases. Sure the fetus has a direct line to human blood, but the human gets to live and even reproduce.

'It's a win-win scenario. Not a parasitism, but a mutualism. It is, however, a very long life cycle. This's why vampires evolved another mode of reproduction, a non-vertical mode. Biting a human results in a new vampire in just three days. Much quicker.' And since Allison knew all of this, Alice saw it all in her vision.

"Jasper, gently place the egg in the bucket of blood. It must be kept in blood at all times or it will dry out and die," I said.


	4. Chapter 2

Edwards POV-

We called a family meeting and poor Alice and Jasper were never going to get a proper anniversary at this rate. We took our respective seats around the dining table. Carlisle was the last to join us, just getting home from his shift at the hospital. Alice started with the retelling of her vision.

Rosalie was ecstatic! 'Emmett and I just tossed away our eggs thirteen years ago, but in another eighty-seven years…' Rosalie was fuming! 'Emmett and I tossed our eggs in the trash when the one thing I want more than anything is a baby! Why didn't Alice see that they were babies and stop us!'

Esme was sad. By cleaning their eggs off and placing them on the shelf she had killed them. 'Three dead babies now.' She would be crying if that were possible. I looked at her and gave her a small smile, hoping to let her know that it was all right. She could not possibly have known.

Bella, Carlisle, and Emmett were confused. 'Vampires don't retch up eggs once every hundred years! Surely this sort of information would be protected, cherished, and passed down through the generations,' Emmett thought.

'Unless,' I thought… 'unless the Volturi wanted to keep the lay-vampire from reproducing. But why would they want to do that? We could all reproduce by the bite. And surely the Romanian coven would never go along with it. They hated the Volturi. The Romanian's were at least as old as the Volturi… Surely they would know as well. Or… maybe the knowledge had really been lost to all vampires…'

My thoughts were interrupted by Carlisle. "The way I see it, we have four options: One, kill the eggs and continue as normal. Two, preserve the eggs in blood and decide what do at a later date. Three, adopt two humans for implantation. And Four, allow Alice and Jasper to leave the family and implant their eggs elsewhere.

"We need to be considerate of the humans we chose for implantation. We don't want to take a healthy human and risk cutting his life short. Not when we could take a dying one and save his life," Carlisle said.

"We need to consider the ramifications of this choice," Jasper said hesitantly. "I want to keep my egg, so option one is out. But it'll be dangerous for the whole family if the Volturi find out about Allison's gift. We'd have to make sure no one comes in contact with Aro, especially until the child reaches maturity. That is a very long time to live in secret. I encourage each of you to think long and hard before agreeing to option three." I was a little shocked that it was Jasper, of all vampires, who was getting all paternal over this egg.

"Well, I know where I stand," Rosalie stated. "I'm going to want to germinate mine and Emmett's eggs next time around. So, I say yes to number three."

Everyone turned to look at Emmett. "Are you sure they're eggs? I mean… I'm a dude. I can't lay eggs. This is chick stuff," Emmett griped, pun intended.

"There's no way to know for certain how vampire reproduction works if we don't try it," Carlisle replied. "I'm sure the fact that both males and females produce mature eggs in our stomachs has contributed to our ignorance of their true form. If only females produced these stones, we would have figured it out long ago.

"Our entire race has appeared to have lost the knowledge of our own reproduction. But, if we have evolved as a species, it makes sense that we should have a mode of vertical inheritance. Given that we are immortal, it makes sense that our reproductive cycle takes so long to complete. If not, the earth would be swarming with vampires.

"And since the cycle is so long, we lost the knowledge as we began to favor reproduction via the bite. After ten thousand years or so, no one was left alive who had two biological vampiric parents, and the knowledge was lost."

"Well, if Jasper's egg hatches into a baby vampire, then I agree with Rose," Emmett said. He really was not sure about the whole vampiric baby thing, but Rose wanted a baby more than anything in the world, even a vampiric one, and Emmett would give her anything she wanted.

"I'm so excited for you Alice and Jasper!" I could feel Bella's excitement in Jasper's thoughts and it was of a level not seen around here since Nessie's wedding. "I can't wait to be an aunt. Yes."

Everyone looked to me and it was my turn to speak. "I think this child will need all of us to protect her. I would hate for the Volturi to get hold of my niece. Yes."

"I too would like to germinate one of my eggs," Esme said. "Yes."

"Well, it looks like it is unanimous," Carlisle said. "Yes. Congratulations Alice and Jasper! Alice, are you going to want to germinate your egg as well?"

Alice looked to the future for a vision of herself vomiting up an egg. "Yes, I think I'll like that," she said with a slight smile.

"Well, then we should adopt two dying human children," Carlisle stated.


	5. Chapter 3

Jasper's POV- It has come to my attention that my readers have not been to vampiric sex-ed class. Some of you seem to be under the impression that vampires can get pregnant by kissing. While this is indeed possible, and is shown in the following chapter, the kissing must be preceded by actual sex and cunnilingus (or some equivalent, like in this chapter). Unfortunately, Edward was perfectly willing to let this misconception continue, as he does not want you to know that he did anything of the sort with Bella. But, he did, and they also are with egg. So, I'm bringing Jasper out to explain the vampiric birds and the bees to all of you lovely readers.

A little more than a month later Alice and I finally had some time to celebrate our anniversary. We were spending it on Isle Esme, just the two of us.

Last week Alice had disgorged her egg, Jackson, who would be able to see the past. And this week the rest of our family had agreed to watch our eggs for us, so that we could take this trip for our anniversary. By watch, I mean once every day they poured fresh animal blood into the bucket, spit, and stirred, recreating vampiric stomach conditions.

Alice had informed me of the details of vampiric fertilization, as well as Edward through her thoughts. Edward told Bella, but the three of them were all too embarrassed, so I had to inform Carlisle and Emmett. They need to know in case they decide they do not want any more eggs. Certain precautions will have to be taken.

Alice and I had had a long talk, about things no vampiric couple has ever had to discuss in recorded history: birth control. Did we want another egg? Two eggs are a lot of responsibility; maybe we should wait a few hundred years before trying for more. After all, there is a five hundred year period of infant like dependency once the parasitic stage is complete.

Alice used visions of Jackson's visions of the past to help her decide. She looked to the future for the time when she would have a conversation with our son about typical vampiric reproduction. Jackson will tell her that they followed five hundred year cycles, producing four offspring in a row, and then throwing away three hundred years worth of eggs. Then, five hundred years after the disgorging of the first two offspring, they would implant eggs again.  
Four dependent offspring at a time seemed to be optimal. It was the most two vampires could carry, with the eldest two on their backs. And it was easier to care for them in groups. It took the same amount of effort to care for four as it did one, so might as well have four, right?

So with that decided, Alice and I set about trying to fertilize our eggs. The process is much more convoluted than in humans. Humans are warm blooded mammals, possess mammary glands, and follow the typically mammalian reproductive cycle. We are not mammals, i.e. we do not possess mammary glands; we are not even deuterstomes.

Mammals are deuterstomes, meaning the oral tube forms second during development. We are monostomes, meaning we only have one opening: the mouth. We use the same cavity for ingestion and elimination of waste; granted we normally do not produce waste, but if we eat human food, it comes right back out the mouth.

Of course we evolved from an ancestor with two openings, a deuterstome, that was warm blooded, lactated, and mammalian. We have secondarily lost these traits, that is why our females have breasts: they are a vestigial organ left over from a lactating ancestor. We have also secondarily lost the baring of live young and internal fertilization, reverting to an ancestral form of reproduction.

Our bodies cannot change to accommodate a developing fetus, or even an egg in the reptilian sense. No, we reproduce more like fish and amphibians. Both sexes disgorge their gametes into the environment.

Well, technically, into the environment of the female's genitalia. Zygotes are formed, and as long as they stay in a venom rich environment they remain viable. Once they are exposed to water or the air, they die. Well not die really. Vampiric cells cannot die. But they do loose the ability to divide and with it the potential to form a mature egg.

The convoluted part comes from the fact that the zygotes must then travel to the stomach, without ever touching air or water. Luckily the little buggers can survive indefinitely in the female's reproductive organ, before being swallowed.

Although multiple zygotes are fertilized each time, only one per vampiric stomach can develop. Just one needs to be swallowed, so I guess it is not all that unlikely that we each unknowingly swallowed a zygote. We did engage in some kinky behavior on our honeymoon. Tonight we were repeating said behavior with the goal of egg production in mind.

I was sitting on a lounge chair, on the sandy beach of Isle Esme, over looking the Atlantic Ocean. I was wearing the designer swim trunks Alice gave me this morning for our anniversary, that she had designed herself. The sun was casting rainbow sparkles off of my skin in the morning light. Alice, wearing only a skimpy two piece, danced her shimmering way over to me feeling of lust and desire and I decided what I was going to do to my lovely wife.

She sat down in my lap, facing away from me towards the azure water, as she had the vision of what I was planning. I could feel the ecstasy radiating off of her as she growled softly. She smiled at me as I used my gift to redouble her emotions. I wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her towards me, and turned her head to face me with my other hand.

I kissed her gently as I ran my fingers along her jaw, down her neck, and down her torso. She ran her fingers along my arm; as always my skin tingled where she touched me. She threw her head back, and I nibbled along her neck, letting out a low growl. She repositioned herself in my lap with her feet perched on the edge of the chair as I fiercely reclaimed her lips.

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The sun was just setting over the water as I swallowed. Alice was still sitting on my lap on the lounge chair, wearing the bikini, facing away from me. I turned her face towards me again to kiss her. She licked my wet lips and swallowed. We should both be with egg now.


	6. Chapter 4

Edward's POV-

It was decided that Carlisle and Esme would adopt, given that they were the oldest, and it would look the least suspicious; for a while at least. Also, it would be hard for Alice and Jasper to adopt, given Jasper's poor self-control. His control had improved greatly in the past forty years, but it would still be most painful for him to be around the humans… but he loved those eggs already, so maybe he would be okay. He worried it would be too risky for him to be near the humans, as he did not want to risk the life of his own offspring with his uncontrollable thirst.

Carlisle had taken time off from work to travel with Esme to East Africa, because they were planning on adopting twin babies orphaned by the AIDs epidemic. Both babies were HIV positive, with an expected life span of just twenty to thirty years. That was with the latest anti-retrovirals, which would never be available to these children unless adopted by wealthy Americans.

Bella and I had left our new cottage and were on our way back to the main house. It was just the two of us, because Renesmee had moved out of our house and in with Jacob when they married. It was hard for me to let my little girl go, but she was an adult and in love, so I did what every father must. And even though she no longer lived with us, we still saw her all of the time. In fact, she and Jacob would be coming over soon and were excited to meet the new Cullens.

Jacob and I had long ago come to an understanding and became friends, even if I did occasionally resent him for stealing my little girl from me and for that time he had tried to steal Bella. But no matter how I tried to hate him, I could not fault him for loving Nessie and Bella. After all I could easily understand why someone would love those two so much; anyone would be crazy not to.

Bella broke the news of the new additions to our family to Jacob and Nessie last month. Nessie was surprised, but understood how much Esme wanted a baby, so she was happy for us. Jacob was surprised and did not quite understand why we would adopt human babies, so he chalked it up to another Cullen peculiarity. We could not tell either of them the truth, because Jacob shared his thoughts with his pack, and there were just too many wolves to keep track of.

"I can't wait to see Renesmee," Bella gushed.

It was just two days ago that we went hunting with her and Jacob, but I too, missed my daughter. "Yes, it will be good to have the whole pack over. They should stop by more often."

"I miss when we lived in Forks and could visit them twice a day."

"Those were good times… I think the whole pack will have to move away soon. The pale-faces will notice that the Quileutes do not age."

"At least they're somewhat insulated on the reservation. Once they leave they'll have to move every ten to twenty years, same as us."

"I do hate moving," Rosalie said as she and Emmett approached from their house. Esme had built them their smallest house ever. It was two stories with only four bedrooms. Rosalie was becoming less ostentatious in her old age.

"It's not so bad," Emmett said cheerful as always. "You don't even have to help Esme build the main house and three smaller ones. I do."

There was one smaller house for each couple, with Esme and Carlisle occupying the main house. Alice and Jasper had been kicked out of the main house twenty years ago after an incident when Jasper was so… overwhelmed by Alice that he temporally lost control of his emotions; Esme and Carlisle were both in the house at the time. I hate seeing that night in their memories. Disgusting!

"Yes, but we all have to go to high school all over again," Rosalie complained.

"But you and Emmett have it easy as you now start out as seniors," I replied. With six teenagers, we had decided to break up our fake ages differently. Alice and Jasper started as juniors, while Bella and I were sophomores. This way we did not have to spend quite so much time in high school. "The worst is that I have to sit through undergrad, med-school, and a residency each time. I hardly get a chance to practice medicine before I have to start over."

After surviving marriage to a human that smells as good as Bella, I was now basically immune to their scent. And, the wolves could not go to a human doctor, so I specialized in house calls to the reservation. I could treat them while attending school, so that they did not have to wait for me to finish each time. I even went to veterinary school once, so that I was prepared in case an injury occurred in their wolf form.

I did my best to graduate each school as quickly as possible to allow myself more time to practice medicine before we grew too old and had to move. I always graduate high school a year early, so I only have to spend two years there. And I had undergrad down to two and a half years, with summer school. Even med-school only took me three years now. Plus a two-year residency. But, by the time nine and a half years were up, people would begin to notice how young we all looked.

I liked to dye the roots of my hair gray… and dye the tips back to my normal color. Although our hair never changed, the dye would wash out over time, so I had to keep doing it. I also spread a rumor around that we had all had lots of plastic surgery. In this day and age, it was normal for people to get preventative plastic surgery at the first signs of wrinkles. So, we could now stay for at least twenty years before the locals grew suspicious. We were currently just three years into our stay here, and attending the local University; we always choose college towns since we spent so many years there. Consequently, we had a good seventeen years left before we would have to move again.

"Who said anything about moving?" Jasper asked as we approached the main house. He and Alice were waiting for us on the porch. Alice was excited about meeting the humans that would quench the thirst of her offspring for the next hundred years. So excited that she had made Jasper rush over here with her hours ago. She and Rosalie had been shopping dozens of times and even set up the nursery while Esme and Carlisle were away. I was afraid of how carried away she would get when it was her biological babies.

Alice had retched up her egg just a month after Jasper. She immediately had a vision of a black haired boy named Jackson; she wanted something similar to Jasper Jr. and Allison. Jackson was gifted as well and I was beginning to think all of Alice and Jasper's offspring would be extraordinarily talented.

Jackson could see the past; all of the past. The past is not subject to change like the future, but is set in stone. As such, he will not be limited to seeing his own kind, like Alice is, but will be able to see all kinds. Sure he will be able to see vampires more easily, because he is one, but he does not even need a creature to be sentient to see its past. In fact, there did not even need to be an animal or other life form present for Jackson to see the past: he could see all the way back to the most recent Big Bang. He could even see the past that occurred outside of this planet.

And so with the arrival of Jackson's egg, Alice was now having visions of him. These visions included him revealing past events that he had learned of in his own visions. Some of these past events were of Alice's human years, which she was now filling in.

Alice also had a vision of The Great Eldritch Creature War, because one day Jackson would see it in a vision and tell Alice. Apparently, several species of mythological creatures were extinct as a result of this war, including goblins, dwarves, spirit warriors, and pure-blood shape-shifters. Werewolves, hobbits, elves, and half-blood shape-shifters survived.

There was a two-day period when vampires were also extinct. They would still be, if it were not for the human meal being interrupted by the shape-shifters when they destroyed the last vampiric nursery (where eggs, host humans, and immature vampires were guarded). In true Carlisle fashion, the human crawled away to hide under a stack of potatoes used to feed the human hosts. The shape-shifters never noticed, and the human was left to make the change alone.

The shape-shifter warriors went west to their stronghold in America. And, once the vampire army learned of the atrocity, their war effort was redoubled. It was truly a Tolkien style war with all the eldritch creatures trying to exterminate the others for world dominance.

The humans became annoyed by all the fighting, and dropped a large number of primitive bombs on the battlegrounds. The bombs formed a ring of fire thanks to the humans' forethought in surrounding the battlegrounds with combustible material.

In the end, the few eldritch creatures that were not killed off by each other, were killed by the bombs and the widespread forest fires. Only the few who were not present survived. And since the wars had started with the elimination of nurseries, rookeries, and hatcheries around the world (only a werewolf hatchery and the elves and hobbit nurseries survived- the elves and hobbits were killed by humans at a later date), there were very few survivors indeed.

I was interrupted from my musings by Renesmee's thoughts. I could hear them from miles away. "I can hear Nessie. They are only a few miles from here."

"Excellent!" Emmett roared.

"We haven't seen them in a week," Rosalie explained.

Now we could hear the roar of their engine. Nessie drives just as fast as her old man; a fact I was very proud of. They rounded the corner and came to a sudden halt only feet away from where we were standing.

Nessie jumped out of the convertible. "Hey, Mom! Hi, Dad!" She pounced on Bella, hugging her first, before hugging me. Quil, Embry, and Claire followed out after Jacob. Moments later the second car pulled up with Leah, Seth, Nahuel, and Nahuel's two sisters.

Leah had imprinted on Nahuel, and introduced Seth and Embry to Jennifer and Maysun, Nahuel's younger and older sister, respectively. Maysun was originally from Algeria and was over two hundred years old, while Jennifer was from Ohio and in her fifties. They had both been raised by their oldest sister Serena with their father, Joham, an integral part of their lives. But Joham had not survived his interrogation by the Volturi, leaving his daughters orphaned and alone. So when Seth and Embry imprinted on Jennifer and Maysun, respectively, the women had no qualms with relocating to La Push.

We exchanged hugs and went inside to wait. It was a little crowded with sixteen people in the house, but our living room was huge.

At forty-five years of age, Claire was by far the oldest looking of the group. But Quil had stopped shifting years ago so he looked almost as old. Claire was passing around the latest pictures of Quil the sixth, Quin, Quade, and Chloe. Quil, Quin, and Quade had all joined the latest pack. With four half vampires in La Push every teenage boy transformed.

Emmett was thinking about how many men were here. 'Definitely enough for a basketball game. There are sixteen of us here in all, but Quil and Claire are too old to play. That leaves fourteen people who can play. The seven men are sure to play. That's plenty for a game.' "Hey Jazz," he called. "You up for a game of basketball?"

"Sure Em. Edward, Jacob, you down?" Jasper smiled, his enthusiasm catching.

In the end, Rose, Bella, Alice, and Nessie opted out to go talk about designing a dress for Rose.

Leah, Jennifer, and Maysun agreed to play with us guys and with Embry, Seth, and Nahuel, that made ten of us. Plenty for a game, just as Emmett had predicted. We had built a re-enforced concrete basketball court in the back yard, as far away from the house as possible, because we were all tired of accidentally breaking Esme's windows. The court was still new and it only had one pothole in it. Emmett had created said pothole when he fell too hard on the fragile concrete, which was a perfect example of why we all had to be careful not to damage the court too badly.

Nahuel's two sisters joined the vampiric team and Nahuel joined the wolf team. In the end, the wolf team won, because we were working too hard to be careful with the ball and not break the rim. They did not have the same limitations. Afterwards, we went back inside, and the wolves helped themselves to refreshments.

That is when I first heard Esme's thoughts as they approached. She was beaming! She was thinking about the twin babies in the back seat. She had been so sad to learn that they both had AIDs.

'Their father recently died of AIDs. He shouldn't have been allowed to infect their mother. But, she died giving birth to the twins'- still a risky procedure in third world countries. 'Carlisle waited until both AIDs tests came back positive before agreeing to adopt the two.' No one was suspicious, yet; a wealthy doctor and his wife who could not have children of their own adopting two babies who would die without proper medical treatment, was considered generous, not questionable behavior.

Alice was the first out of the house, followed by Rosalie. The rest of us deemed to wait inside. Only a minute passed before Alice and Rosalie came back in each holding a baby girl. Carlisle and Esme followed them in carrying baby paraphernalia.

Once her hands were free, Esme announced, "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Zakaira and Zikare", indicating the babies in Alice and Rosalie's arms, respectively.

A huge welcome home party ensued, with everyone congratulating Esme on finally getting not just one, but two babies. Even Jasper took a turn holding the babies. He was clearly in awe that these tiny sickly creatures would host the first vampiric fetuses in a hundred thousand years, which was knowledge learned from Alice's visions of Jackson telling of his own visions of the past.

Jasper was thinking of how easy being a history professor would be with Jackson by his side. Like me, Jasper also had to endure graduate school over and over again to work in his chosen trade.

The Quileutes were a little surprised that Carlisle and Esme had not chosen children that looked like them. 'They aren't even the same species; the least they could do is pick babies with the same eye, hair, and skin color as themselves, right?' Embry thought.

Jacob was thinking how odd our very white skin looked next to the babies' extremely dark skin. He chalked it up to, 'Carlisle and Esme must have too large a heart to choose children based on looks. Besides, the tribe would be very irate if they had adopted healthy babies. At least these babies will have a longer life expectancy with two vampiric parents than if left alone.' He chucked lightly at the thought.

Nessie was thinking that this was her fault. 'If Jake and I'd just get on with producing great grandchildren for Esme, she wouldn't feel the need to adopt humans. The Volturi'll find out about this and order that the twins be changed. Or worse, think we have immortal children.' She shuddered at the thought; although how anyone could mistake people this dark for vampires was beyond me. Nessie still had nightmares from when she met the Volturi as a child.

"Nessie, don't worry so much. You and Jacob should take your time before having children. You two have the rest of eternity together. There is no rush," I reasoned. Bella and I were not particularly impatient for grandchildren.

"You aren't worried about the Volturi?"

"Yes," I admitted. "But, we are not going to tell the twins the truth about us. They will be teenagers before they get suspicious. By then, we can change them. After all, they have AIDs. If we don't change them, they will die before they reach the age of thirty. Carlisle was very thorough when choosing these two." I hated the white lie I was telling my daughter, but she was safer this way.

"I'm sure you're right, Daddy," she replied hugging me.

The Quileutes and the hybrids left around midnight, needing to get home to sleep. How inconvenient. But the party raged on without them until morning. The main event did not start until the twins woke up the next morning. The babies were changed, dressed, and brought into the living room for the implantation and Jasper brought in the paint bucket of doom.

Jasper's egg had been added to Alice's bucket in order to reduce the effort required for preservation. They had taken turns preserving the eggs and fresh animal blood will not cut it. The eggs came from the stomach of a vampire and needed fresh stomach contents every day; vampire venom must be added to the blood. This meant everyday either Alice or Jasper would puke in a fresh bucket and transfer the eggs. They were each hunting more frequently than usual to make up for it.

Well, at least that is how it was until they went on their honeymoon and came back pregnant with a new brood of eggs. Vomiting carries with it a risk of miscarriage, so it is not advisable for vampires in para, with egg, to do so. Instead we brought back drained animal blood from our hunts or used donated human blood. And to provide the vampiric venom, we each contributed spit, making synthetic stomach contents in the bucket.

Alice was grateful the regurgitating and spitting part was over. Although, spitting was more time consuming, regurgitating was more unpleasant. She was thinking, 'Next time we should plan ahead and adopt _before_ the eggs are retched up.' I nodded at her in agreement, especially because Bella and I were the next couple set to reach our one hundredth anniversary…

Bella and I had talked about what to do with our eggs. It was a shock to learn that we were each with egg; we would have used birth control if we had known it was a possibility. Did we even want more children? Was Nessie enough? We had agreed to wait to decide. Seeing them in Alice's visions would make a huge difference in our decision making capabilities, because it would give us additional information on the subject.

But I was sure that once Alice had a vision of two adorable babies Bella would want to keep them. She was a sucker for parasites, as evidenced by the fact that she almost died to bring Nessie into this world. We would have to limit our egg production in the future. I was a little worried that another mind-reader in this family was more than we could possibly cope with. Is one mind-reader not enough? Maybe we would luck out and they would both be shields like Bella.

"Okay, let's begin," Carlisle announced. "Rosalie, you hold Zikare. Esme, take Zakaira. Alice, which baby should get which egg?"

"Zakaira's oldest, so she should get Allison."

"Okay, Jasper please retrieve your egg and clean it off," Carlisle instructed.

Jasper nodded in agreement and picked his egg out of the bucket. I could not tell them apart, but I could tell from his thoughts that he could. After wiping the egg clean, he handed the egg over to Carlisle. Carlisle opened Zakaira's mouth, placed the egg inside, and poured some water into her mouth. I was surprised at how easy this was. Zakaira was only a year old, but she seemed to think that this was a normal feeding and swallowed. Plus, it was breakfast time and she was hungry. The procedure was then repeated with Zikare and Jackson's egg.

Alice had used her visions of future conversations with Allison and Jackson to learn the procedure for proper egg implantation. The eggs had evolved to be relatively easy for humans to swallow. Not too big, and they apparently tasted like milk to humans. Alice had then informed Carlisle, and I could tell from his thoughts now that the procedure had gone much more smoothly than he had anticipated.

"It's breakfast time. We should feed the twins something," Esme said.

"I concur," Carlisle replied taking Zikare from Rosalie. Carlisle, Esme, Alice, and Jasper then left to the kitchen in order to prepare human food. Neither Alice nor Jasper had ever cooked human food, so this was sure to be a sight. But, they were determined to learn, and their eggs' hosts would require a constant intake of human food, so this ability may one day prove vital.

And now that the implantation was complete, Emmett was thinking of putting Rosalie to bed, as we had all missed our nightly activities due to the party. I had to get away from them before I overheard anymore. "Bella, are you ready to go home?"

"Yes," she replied taking my hand for the short journey back to our cottage.


	7. Chapter 5

Jasper's POV:

Alice, Esme, and I were taking the twins to their Mommy and Me gymnastics class at the town center gym. We went every Monday evening, because Esme thought they needed some human interaction; apparently vampires were not enough. And this meant Mommy and Me classes and before gymnastics it was nursery rhymes, so this was a slight improvement.

This was only their second class, because a human must be eighteen months old to enroll, and the twins just turned eighteen months last week. There would be another eight weeks of following Alice to this smelly human-filled gym. Great. Good thing I do not have to breathe.

I was sitting on the bleachers, watching the hilarious antics of humans trying to teach eighteen month old humans to roll over. Emmett would love this! Zikare just fell down, again! Humans are good for one thing at least. The only problem is, when I laugh I breathe. Ew, human stench.

I was still recovering from the laughter with a painful grimace on my face, when the young man next to me turned in my direction. "You're Jasper Hale, right? I'm John Davidson. We went to high school together." He was feeling relieved to find another man to talk to. Ah, I did remember. He was two years under me, meaning he should be a Senior this year.

But, instead the moron could not figure out how to use a condom and knocked up his girlfriend freshman year. Now he was enrolled in continuation school and working full time. I realized then that his baby mama must be here with the kid on the gym floor. "Yeah, I remember. But it's Cullen now; Jasper Cullen. Hale is my maiden name."

I really hate having to talk to humans, because it involves having to breathe and smell them. Ideally I would avoid it completely by manipulating this human's emotional state to a less communicative one. But, I knew I needed to take this human interaction opportunity to disseminate the latest lies we were feeding the local humans. So, now that Alice and I were supposedly newly weds, I needed to work this fact into any conversations I had with humans.

Plus, Alice would be proud of me for keeping up the human charade, and we would all be safer if I did my best to blend in, so I decided to ask a question to keep the conversation going. "Are you here with your wife and kid?"

"Hey man! We aren't married. I'm still free." He was proud of this. I resisted the urge to drink him and rid his family of their burden: Alice would be disappointed and we would have to move. "But, yeah, I'm here with my baby mama and our son Johnny. You?"

"My _wife_, Alice, and I are here helping my Aunt Esme with our adopted sisters," I said indicating where Alice and Esme stood with Zikare and Zakaira. I made sure to emphasize the word wife, hoping he would get the hint that I thought he should marry the mother of his child.

"When did you two tie the knot? And why'd you take her last name?" he asked curiously with a touch of disdain. Apparently this human did not approve of my choice to marry or to take my wife's name. But, since Hale was not my real last name, it made no sense for Alice to take it. And, I really did not care whose last name we used as long as we were together.

"My brother Emmett took Rosalie's last name when they married, so he's Mr. Hale now," I dropped another piece of the lie: Emmett and Rosalie were supposed newly weds as well. "I thought it apt that I do the same. And as soon as we were legal Alice and I went to Vegas." Since we did not have an actual ceremony, the story was that we had eloped in Las Vegas, and as long as I have to make nice with the human, I might as well reinforce the lies.

"I wanted to ensure no one else had a chance to steal her from me," I continued. Humans sure are daft. This one did not seem to be taking the hint that one should love and respect their significant other. "And, I have a 'I kill anyone who touches Alice' policy. It goes over better now that it's a 'I kill anyone who touches my wife' policy."

"Oh, that's cool. So, why don't you chill at home and let your wife help your Aunt?" He clearly did not want to be here, as I could feel the apathy wash over him.

"How am I supposed to enforce my policy if I'm not here to ensure no one touches my wife? I'd hate to have to track down the offender after the fact. That changes it from third degree to first degree murder." This may be a bit much given that we are trying to blend in with the humans, but my patience was shot and I wanted this one to fear me: he seemed far too comfortable around me.

"I see your point," he replied nervously, unsure whether I was serious or joking. Good. Let him squirm.

"Plus, Alice and I were thinking of adopting our own third world baby. Do the Brad and Angelina thing, you know?" Adopting African orphans was still a popular show of wealth among the rich humans. And as we were pretending to be rich humans, Edward had caught some other humans thinking our adopted twins were a status symbol illustrating just how filthy rich we were. It seemed to be a good excuse as to why we did not pick white babies to adopt, so we were going along with this rumor.

"Trust me, kids are a major pain. I can't go out smoking with the guys 'cause I've gotta pull a late shift at Del Taco." His depression over his situation colored his words.

"So, why are you here if you don't appreciate what you have?" I was very annoyed with this boy right now, trying my hardest to continue to act human and not drink the moron.

"My baby mama doesn't have a car, so I have to drive her." Well at least he has the courtesy to take care of them, even if he does not appreciate them. He definitely does not deserve them.

"You know you should appreciate what you have. My Aunt and Uncle had to adopt all of us because they couldn't have kids of their own." I could feel his embarrassment radiate off of him. I was hoping he would feel ashamed of himself, but it is a start.

And with that, the hour of torture was up, and Alice and Esme came to meet me by the bleachers. I handed each a pair of toddler shoes, and leaned in to kiss my wife and send her my love. I was still doing my best to put on a show for the stupid human and lead by example.

That is when it happened. Alice froze, stock still, sitting next to me with a hand out to put on a shoe. I grabbed the shoe, saying, "Here, let me have a turn. You hogged her all day," hoping to distract the humans from noticing the vision.

A moment later, Alice unfroze, and whispered so low that only Esme and I could hear, "Peter and Charlotte are in town. They caught our scent."

"We can't let them see the girls," Esme replied panicking. I sent her calm so that we could leave without the humans noticing the sudden change.

I picked up the girls and inserted them into the stroller, as Alice searched the future for the best course of action. "Esme, take the girls home. Jasper and I will head them off. We won't be home for a few days."

"Okay," Esme agreed. Alice and I walked her to the car, each of us inserted a twin into a carseat, and Esme put the stroller in the trunk.

"Everything'll be alright. We'll reach them before they reach the house," Alice reassured Esme with a farewell hug, before Esme climbed into the car. But, I could feel Esme's panic return as she drove away and out of my influence.

Alice and I took off walking towards the forest, hand-in-hand, at a human pace, because we were still surrounded by humans. "Why are they here?" I asked.

"They were in the area, and wanted to stop by to say 'Hi'. A friendly visit."

"What are we going to say to keep them away?"

"Emmett was playing football in the house and went through two load-bearing walls: the house is destroyed. We were staying at Edward's, but it's too small for guests. They don't know about the other two smaller houses." Peter and Charlotte knew we were in this city, but they had yet to visit us here. And although we had three smaller houses at our last residence, it was conceivable that they had not been built at this property. As long as Alice saw them buying this excuse, then it was fine with me.

I nodded my assent to this story as we reached the forest. We disappeared within and took up our full speed, hoping to intercept my friends before they reached the house. They did not have our exact address, but they did not need it: they would go into town, pick up our scent, and follow it to our home.

We came across their trail a few towns over. They had just finished drinking, because they knew they would not be able to drink at our house. "Peter! Charlotte! What a pleasant surprise!" I called, sending out happiness as we approached.

"Jasper and Alice! I should've known you'd see us coming! Did you come to help us clean up?" Peter asked cheerfully indicating the three corpses.

"Sure did. We were so excited when we saw you coming that we couldn't wait. It's been too long," Alice trilled, excitedly hugging Charlotte. I picked up the third corpse and followed Peter and Charlotte to the river. We tied anchors to the bodies and tossed them over the bridge.

"Okay, so where's this new house of yours?" Peter asked clapping me on the shoulder.

"No can do Peter. Emmett destroyed it, again. We've been staying with my brother Edward, but his place is tiny and already cramped with the eight of us. We're taking you to a cabin in the mountains."

Alice and I had been to this cabin before to get away from the family. We did not need to sleep when we went camping, but beds do come in handy for other activities. And our cottage is far enough away from the other buildings that sound does not travel, but Edward can still hear our thoughts, and I like my privacy, so renting human cabins was a pleasant convenience.

"How'd Emmett break the house this time?" Peter asked in between fits of laughter.

"Football in the house," I replied, leading them through the woods towards the mountains.

"He went through two wall and took out two load-bearing beams. We're in the middle of major repairs," Alice added.

"That does sound like him," Peter replied.

"Doesn't Esme have a no football in the house rule?" Charlotte asked, curious but not suspicious. Ah, she knows us too well.

"Yes, but Emmett was alone with Nessie and the wolves. There was no one to stop them," Alice chimed in.

"Ah, you're still associating with the enemy, then?" Peter asked with disapproval.

"Nessie married the thing. We've no choice but to tolerate their presence," I replied curtly.

"Why do you two stink of human?" Charlotte wondered suspiciously.

"We were attending University classes," Alice lied to explain the scent of the twins. We were at the University earlier today, but he was most likely smelling our pet humans.

"My brother, the History Major!" Peter exclaimed, pun intended. "Never would I have believed that this blood-thirsty vampire would last a day without drinking the other students dry!" Peter's booming laugh echoed off the mountains as we approached the cabin office.

"I'll just go in and book a two-room cabin," Alice announced, leaving me to entertain Peter and Charlotte in the woods, because their red eyes would draw suspicion.

"It's been too long since you've paid me a visit, brother. Where've you two been?" I asked.

"The usual. We went north to Canada, east to Maine, south to Maryland, west to Pennsylvania, northwest to Washington. Repeat," Peter replied.

"Don't forget we swam to England, Dear," Charlotte reminded him sweetly.

"Yes, we went to England for our one hundred fifth anniversary last year." I could feel his love for her radiate off of him.

"Cabin number nine," Alice said jingling the key as she left the office. We always made sure to ask for number nine, because it was the most remote and furthest from the humans. Alice and I led the way, with Peter and Charlotte following.

We spent the night, and all of the rest of the week catching up. Neither Alice nor I had any exams in our classes this week, and Alice did not see us missing anything. And on Sunday, we went into town to shop.

Peter and Charlotte, being nomads, only carry the clothes that fit in their backpacks. Whenever they come for a visit, Alice and I always take them shopping for new clothes. And nomads only have what money they take off their victims, but Alice and I have more money than we know what to do with, so we always insist on giving them money.

Last time we managed to convince them to take a credit card that we pay, but still, they do not like to go into shops with their red eyes. Alice handed them each a pair of designer sun glasses and off we went. Peter and I found a football game to watch at Sears and commenced our wait.

Both being from Texas, we thoroughly enjoyed a good game. Football was the one luxury Maria tolerated. Before the radio was invented, we would steal balls and play ourselves. We would even climb atop roofs to watch a human game from afar.

Once we had a radio, Monday evenings were declared free time to listen. All of the covens agreed not to wage war during the game. It was the only truce the Southern Covens ever managed to come to.

I must have the worst luck imaginable, because that was when John, the annoying human saw me. For a fleeting moment I hoped he would keep walking, because he had his kid and baby mama with him. When he saw me, I sent him apprehension and nervousness, hoping to scare him away.

No such luck; I should have sent him dread and fear, but Alice might get mad if I scare him too bad. He sent his baby mama and kid along without him, and walked over to join us at the screen. "What's up my man?" the annoying human asked. Since when was _I_ his man?

"Watching the game. No talking until half time." I shot him a look that could kill. Hopefully he would get the message and not interrupt the game. He grunted, and set about to stare and drool at the humongous flat screen.

At half time, John decided to take advantage of the rule. "So, what're you doing here?" he asked.

"My brother Peter and I are shopping with our wives," I replied, sending him more apprehension. This doofus was really thick, hanging around a couple of vampires. I guess we must not be as scary as his baby mama.

"Your brother? I thought Edward and Emmett were your only brothers."

"My foster brother. Peter and I were in the same foster home before I went to live with the Cullens. It was Peter's idea to run away from that hellhole. I owe him my life." This was the official story we were using this time around to explain why Rosalie had a New York accent while I have a Texan one.

"I thought you've always been with the Cullens, since your parents died."

"No, that's Rosalie. She went to live with my Aunt, while I got sent to Hell. It was Alice's idea to track down my sister. When I did, they offered to adopt the four of us, but Peter refused, preferring to live on the streets."

"I thought you met when the Cullens adopted Alice." This human obviously had not heard the story of the Cullen clan before.

"No, Alice found me living on the streets. She saved me. Without her, I'd still be on the streets with Peter here." I clapped Peter on the shoulder.

"So, um… how do you know this man, Jasper?" Peter asked me hesitantly, obviously uncomfortable around humans.

"We went to high school together," I replied, hoping the moron would not mention the pet humans.

"Major… Whitlock… high … school," Peter spluttered in between fits of laughter. Apparently my attendance of school was hilarious.

"Excuse my brother. He thinks it funny that I prefer school over the streets. He hasn't been to school since before Maria's house," I explained.

"Why did he call you Major Whitlock?" John asked confused. I would have to make up a story on the spot to explain Peter's slip.

"That's what Maria called me. I was her favorite, so she called me Major. Her last name was Whitlock." Just then, I was saved by his baby mama. She was calling him over to indicate she was ready to leave. "Tough luck. Hope you have the game tivoed."

"Of course. Catch you later man." He was about to clap my shoulder, but thankfully the death glare I sent made him change his mind. I could taste the fear wafting off of him.

Peter and I went back to watching the game, the after-game special, and a baseball game, because our wives could really shop. We were fixtures in the mall in front of that flat screen until our wives finally found us, finished at last.

"I missed you," I said kissing Alice's forehead as she placed a new cowboy hat upon my head, having jumped on my back to reach. Charlotte did the same to Peter, except that she was closer to his height so that she could reach standing on the ground.

"I missed you too. Peter and Charlotte will have to leave tonight in order to make it into the city to feed by Monday."

"Of course," I replied as we left the store and walked into the forest. Peter and Charlotte first change into their new clothes and shoes, and then packed their new backpacks with the remaining items. "Don't be such strangers," I said giving my brother a man hug before watching them disappear into the forest. Alice and I gathered up the discarded items for the trash before turning for home.

Alice and I were feeling quite lucky that we had made it through the week without arousing their suspicion; that Peter and Charlotte were still clueless as to our pets. They only stop by once every twenty years or so, so we should be good until after the twins come of age.

"That went well," my life stated simply, sending me her love. I sent mine back to her as I took her hand and ran.


	8. Chapter 6

Edward's POV:

This year the human twins were graduating from our old high school and we were all really happy that we had managed to stay here for twenty years without anyone catching on. Esme played the part of the dutiful wife and loving mother. The townsfolk were even happy for her- finally getting two healthy babies after raising six teenagers.

We never bothered to tell the townsfolk about the babies being born with AIDs, because both babies tested negative after implantation; they did not even need anti-retrovirals. Carlisle re-tested them every year to make sure and he also checked the vampiric fetuses during the check-ups, but they always appeared as dense blobs on the ultrasound. The Quileutes still thought the twins had the disease and we told them the anti-retrovirals were working.

The twins were spending the night at a friend's house. A female friend's house, because boys were too scared of their three uncles to dare ask them out. We might have to make an effort not to scare off potential boyfriends in the future and I would have to talk to Jasper about it, because he was the one who scared off most of the boys. He had trouble allowing others to be near his own babies. After all, baby vampires would stop developing if their humans were killed. They would not die, as vampires cannot die in the human sense, but they would be stuck at a developmental stage where they were incapable of caring for themselves or growing.

Alice had seen from visions of Jackson how the ancient vampires dealt with such situations in the past; it was deemed merciful to burn the undead fetus. Better that than bury it with the human, allowing the human to rot around it for all eternity. If it happened to us, we would probably attempt to care for an undead fetus and find a way to feed it blood even through we knew it would do no good. Jasper was not very happy with any of these thoughts, so he was just a tad bit over protective.

While we waited for Carlisle to come home from the hospital, Bella and Rose brought out their latest killer robots and we watched an all out robot fight to the death. Rose's bot won, because Bella's chainsaw arm got stuck, making it a sitting duck for Rose's bot. Rose did not even bother chopping Bella's bot up first, just scooped it up in the trash compacter arm and crushed.

I smiled my crooked smile, trying to be supportive of Bella's hobby. "I liked your death machine. It was very menacing. Next time, you are sure to get Rose's trash compacter on wheels."

"You think so?" She stood on her tip-toes for a kiss and I obliged.

We were still standing there kissing when Carlisle finally came home. We were taking advantage of the human-free house to have a family meeting. Not only was this meeting about the humans, but said humans were still clueless as to our true nature, so all of our important discussions had to wait for human-free moments.

We gathered around the dining room table, as always. "We need to think about leaving," Carlisle announced. "The twins are done with school this year. And they're getting old enough that the Quileutes will become suspicious if we don't change them. We need to isolate them from all other vampires so that rumors don't spread. We'll say we did change them. Or we broke off contact with them so we wouldn't have to change them. Or AIDs took them from us."

While my father spoke, I was listening to Bella's feelings in Jaspers head, because with Bella's shield in place, I frequently resorted to this tactic to glean insight into her mind. She was extremely upset, most likely from the thought of being so far from Nessie and of not being able to see her several times a week. I did not care for this scenario either. Sure she could take care of herself and she had Jacob. Jacob had done a better job ensuring Nessie's safety than he had of Bella's… but I still did not want to be away from her.

"Maybe it would be better if we didn't all go with the twins," I suggested. "The ten of us are a lot to hide and the babies will not be threatened by the Volturi until they leave their host bodies. Stealth is preferable to strength at this point in time. The Volturi will never know of their existence. Jasper and Alice will stay with them, of course. Bella and I could stay with Renesmee."

Nessie and Jacob would need to leave La Push soon, because they had been there too long already. The others Quileutes were already pretending that they were their own grandchildren. Nahuel could pass for Quileute, but the pale skin of his sisters and Nessie stucks out like a sore thumb. She and Jacob had already asked if they could move with us next time around. We would not have to move too far and could still visit the tribe and I could still make shape-shifter house calls.

I could see in Jasper's thoughts that Bella approved of this plan. But Jasper was not so sure about it himself. He was worried about two being enough to protect the twin pets.

Jasper had never lost control around the girls- even that time Zikare sliced her hand open. Not even when Zakaira broke her arm… she was bleeding a lot. He loved his children so much he could never hurt their hosts. Besides, the twins smelled off. Not quite as much as Nessie, but they did not smell nearly as appetizing as normal humans. It was like a built in defense against having your host eaten by another vampire. No, he was no longer worried about his own self-control around the twins.

But Jasper was worried about other dangers, such as discovery by other vampires. 'What if Peter and Charlotte stop by for a visit when Alice and I have the humans with us? What if nomads try to eat the humans? And what if they suffer from human injuries? Who will treat them without Edward and Carlisle around?'

Carlisle was not sure where he wanted to go. 'Should I stay here with Nessie and continue to work as a doctor? Or follow my twins?' I could see how much Carlisle loved those girls in Jasper's thoughts.

Esme thought of those girls like they were her own. She could never leave them. "I wish to stay with the twins wherever they go."

That did it for Carlisle. "Yes, we should stay with our children. It'll look suspicious if we were to separate from them."

Emmett was waiting on Rosalie to tell him what to do. He was actually a little bored with the discussion. To entertain himself, he was thinking back to the time before I met Bella. 'Remember when the entire family was betting on your sexuality and sexual preference?' I could tell he was trying to egg me on… get me to wrestle him later. 'Esme and I each had ten grand down on you being gay.' He was picturing all of those blind dates, with men, Esme had set me up on. 'I wonder if Bella knows about that…'

I scowled as I remembered how I had lost ten thousand dollars in that bet. Rosalie, Carlisle, and I had each bet that I was impotent or an eunuch. I was so close to winning a pay out too… We had agreed that if I made it to one hundred vampiric years old with my virginity intact it would count as impotent, but Bella had come along just as I was within sight of the prize.

Not that the three of us would have won the whole prize. Years earlier Carlisle had ordered a payout in Jasper's favor. Emmett was thinking about that now. He knew how much it irritated me to have lost a bet regarding my own self.

I vehemently insisted that Jasper had cheated; if he had not been making me feel horny with his gift, then I would never have been caught red handed with my piano: Jasper had ten thousand down on me being sexually attracted to my piano. We were all sure he would lose, so we let him place the wager.

And the bet did not stick out as being suspicious, because Jasper always bets on something equally improbable. Alice always wins, and they share finances, so losing to her does not actually cost him anything. He simply has fun betting against his mate; the more ridiculous the bet, the better.

But this time was different: he was upset with me for having read his thoughts one too many times and wanted payback. Plus, Alice's invariable wins were starting to annoy him, and he wanted to play dirty. Alice's visions allow her to cheat when it comes to our bets, so he wanted to win by cheating to show that he could do it too. Jasper just had to be a little more creative about it.

With Jasper's special talent, he caught me thinking about how pretty the music was, and then tampered with my emotions. Jasper called everyone to come down, and hurry. With their vampiric speed, I was surrounded by witnesses before I could recover. And Carlisle had ordered the payout.

Jasper used the money to repair the hole in the floor of Alice's bedroom and to replace the destroyed bed. Later, when I married Bella, Alice was also deemed to have won. She was the only one who had bet on heterosexual. But, since she had caused half the damage to her room and bed, she did not make Jasper cough up her half of the winnings.

I nodded at Emmett, to indicate that he had gotten me sufficiently upset to wrestle with him later.

Rosalie was indecisive. She did not know which side to go with. 'On the one hand I love the twins, Alice, Jasper, Esme, and Carlisle. On the other, I love Nessie and Bella.' She still thought I was annoying, but since Bella now shielded Rose's thoughts from me whenever she asked, she was liking me a lot more. 'And four of us are already going with the twins. Six people are still a lot to hide; eight will be too many.'

I decided to tip the scale for her, "Rose, I am next to cough up an egg. If you go with them, you will miss it. I know how much you have been looking forward to seeing me suffer."

I was teasing her a bit, and she knew it. She was thinking, 'Bella and Edward might need help when it's their turn in forty years. Nessie and Jacob are still not allowed to know.' She was being selfless for once. It was so out of character that I was shocked. Jasper noticed my reaction and gave me a questioning look, raising one eyebrow.

"I think Em and I should go with Bella and Edward. That way it's an even split. But, I also think Zakaira and Zikare should have a say in where you go. It's their lives, and they only get to live them once. I've been talking to them about University. They should be given the chance to go."

Jasper was thinking this would complicate things. 'There are so many more places we could go away from civilization. Places that would be safer.' "They could take online classes," Jasper suggested as a compromise. He too had grown attached to the humans.

"Rosalie's right. We should come up with a list of the safest options and let the girls choose," Esme said.

"They might be safer if we keep our distance. The four of you could live next to them, but not with them. Pretend to know them, but not be related. Let them blend in like any other humans," Bella suggested.

Alice did not like this plan. 'Be kept at a distance from my babies?' Jasper could tell this idea bothered her, but he was more impartial.

Jasper too did not like the idea of distancing themselves. 'Whatever is safest for the humans will be safest for the babies.' "The idea has merit. Alice, you'll be able to see them. They won't be far away and we can be neighbors. We'll be so close we can hear them. We'll see them and talk to them all the time. We can even enroll at University with them and pretend to be best friends! Then other vampires won't notice we're keeping human pets."

Alice felt better about this idea now. She looked to the future to see if this would work. 'It'll work but…' "The girls will grow suspicious of us soon. They'll notice that we never age."

"I'm surprised they haven't figured it out by now. They're smart girls. We never bother to eat in front of them, and we never take them hunting with us," Carlisle said.

"They, like Charlie, have jumped to the wrong conclusion regarding us. They think the six of us eat at our own house, and that Esme is anorexic. Carlisle, you are gone so often they do not even notice that you do not eat," I explained.

"But, when Jasper and I enroll in University with them they'll be suspicious. We'll have to think of something to tell them."

"They already know Carlisle cured their AIDs. Maybe we could just explain that we're not quite human. We could say we're aging slower than normal, because we have a longer lifespan. A little lie. Like Charlie, they'll jump to the wrong conclusions," Bella reasoned.

"They'll have to be told sometime," Rosalie countered. "You can't keep them in the dark forever. Eventually they'll turn one hundred and die."

"But the sooner we tell them the greater the risk from the Volturi will be," Jasper insisted. "Without Bella to shield our thoughts, if any one of us touches Aro, he'll know, and the girls will either be killed or changed. The babies won't survive if the girls are changed!"

"Jasper's right, it's risky for all involved to tell the girls sooner, rather than later. We should let them live their lives. When they're elderly, we will tell," Alice reasoned.

Rosalie gave Alice an exasperated look. "We should just wait until they're ninety-nine and then spring this on them?"

"Of course not. By the time they're eighty, we can pretend to ship them off to an old-folks home. Then we can whisk them off to someplace exclusive, like Antarctica. They can live out their remaining years in seclusion," Jasper replied.

"That's twenty years of their lives they could be spending with their grandchildren," Rosalie hissed.

'She's taking this valuing human life thing to the extremes,' Jasper thought. 'After all, these girls would be very ill by now if it weren't for my beautiful babies. If Carlisle and Esme don't have a problem with it, why should Rose?' "Carlisle, Esme, what do you think?"

"I agree that we should tell them later in life, like around the age of eighty", Esme replied. "But, we should let them continue to live with their human friends and family. We can hide from the Volturi for twenty years, can't we?"

Alice was thinking about the risk. She was looking to the future, worried about getting so close, eighty years into the gestation, only to loose the babies. A vision of her talking to Allison came to her then. Allison was explaining,_ "A vampiric fetus only needs the human to survive for the first seventy years before it can survive outside the host. The fetus will stay in the human for the full one hundred years as long as nothing happens, but seventy would do."_

Alice smiled at Jasper and radiated joy. "Baby vampires are viable after only seventy years of parasitism. If we're caught by the Volturi at the eighty year mark, the babies will be fine."

Jasper smiled and replied, "Then it's agreed. We'll tell them at eighty, let them stay with the humans, and take our chances with the Volturi."

The meeting broke up, and I eyed Emmett. He smiled and thought, 'Oh yeah. Bring it.'

I kissed Bella on the forehead and said, "Em and I are going to blow off some steam outside."

"Okay," she replied. "Rose, Alice, and I are going to work on that dress we're designing for Nessie."

"Jazz, Edward and I are going to wrestle, care to join us?" Emmett loved a fight.

"Sure, let's go," Jasper said as he kissed Alice on the head. "We won't have much longer together before we split up." We walked outside to our usual spot, because Esme was still not fond of us breaking down the house.

"Em, are you ready for me to kick your butt? And for the umpteenth time, Jazz cheated."

"When did I ever cheat?" Jasper asked confused.

"The Edward is in love with the piano bet," Emmett clarified. Luckily we were far enough away from the main house that Bella would not hear: she still did not know, and I wanted it to remain that way.

"I did not cheat, Edward was in love with that piano. I won the bet because I knew how he felt about his piano."

"See! He admits it! You cheated, Jazz!"

"I didn't cheat!"

"You used your gift to affect the outcome of a bet. According to you, I was already in love with the piano, and you used your gift to find out, before you placed the bet."

"But Alice uses her visions to win bets all the time. Besides, what does it matter? If I lost, the money just goes to Alice, and therefore back to me."

"It matters because it's my reputation! I never had sexual fantasies about that piano, and you know it!"

"This is about Bella. You never told her, did you?" He was picturing Bella's reaction if she were to find out.

"Enough talk, when are we going to wrestle?" Emmett was impatient to begin. We had already made it to the clearing behind the main house.

"Now!" I tackled him before he could prepare. I had him in a headlock before he realized I had started.

Jasper had been teaching Emmett some moves to use against me and I could hear Jasper's thoughts as he tried to coach Emmett in how to get out of this. Jasper was trying to teach him moves that would take full advantage of his strength, instead of coming at me straight on. But, Emmett was slower than me, and I had the advantage of hearing the move in Jasper's head, before the delay in hearing it in Emmett's head, so I jumped out of the way just as Emmett was going to elbow me. After a few more attempts to break free, Jasper called it in my favor.

Then Jasper and I fought. "Loser concedes they were wrong regarding my sexual preference," I wagered. I did not mention it to Jasper, but either way I was wrong and had lost the bet to Alice. I had my money on impotent, not heterosexual. If I lost, I just planned on admitting that I was wrong about being impotent, and that I was indeed heterosexual.

"You're on."

As it turns out, we tied, so we both agreed to drop it. Then Emmett suckered Jasper into teaching him some more moves. So I went inside to find Bella and take her back to our cottage.

"Bella, are you ready to head home?"

"Sure, Alice and I were just finishing up."

We said our goodbyes and headed back to our cottage. The sun was starting to rise, but just barely. We would have alone time left before work. I worked at the same hospital as Carlisle, but I normally took an earlier shift. It was another cloudy day today, so our skin did not sparkle.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

"We have been married almost sixty years now. Are we still as bad as Em and Rose?"

I grinned, and picked her up as we crossed the threshold. "Definitely. Worse even."

"I'll hold you to that," she said smiling up at me. I leaned down and kissed her full lips.


	9. Chapter 7

Edwards POV:

In the end, the twins agreed to an University in the middle of nowhere and as far away from other vampires as possible and they really were not all that far from us. Zakaira wanted to be a biologist, and Zikare a physicist, and Alice and Jasper had enrolled in the same University in order to watch and protect them. Alice and Jasper were debating whether they should again major in history and business, respectively, or should they major in biology and physics? In the end, they deemed it safer to be in all of the same classes with the girls, and enrolled as biology and physics majors.

Carlisle got a job at the local teaching hospital, and Esme set up her architecture business. Bella and I, along with Rosalie, Emmett, Renesmee, and Jacob decided to go back to Alaska and the Denali sisters. Tanya had finally found her human sole mate Jason and decided to change him. Garrett had taken a liking to vegetarianism, but mostly Kate. And Carmen and Eleazar were as happy as ever, so there were now six members of the Denali Coven.

We had decided not to tell the Denalis about the eggs. Carmen and Eleazar were the only ones who were due to retch up eggs while we were with them, because neither Garrett and Kate, nor Tanya and Jason had been together long enough. But, I knew from their first visit after Esme adopted the human twins that Carmen and Eleazar did not want children. They did not understand why Esme would bother adopting children. Tanya and Kate were more supportive of Esme's decision, but still neither one was envious of her.

This time we decided to start off a little older. Bella, Rose, Emmett, Nessie and Jacob would all start undergrad at the local University. Bella was choosing chemistry this time, after already majoring in biology and engineering once. Rose was choosing engineering, again. This would be Jacob's second time majoring in politics, but it had been fifty years, and as Quileute Chief, he needed a refresher. Nessie was trying chemistry out with Bella. Last time she had taken biology with me, but she did not like research or sick people, so she was trying something new.

Emmett, well, was being Emmett. In all these years he still has not decided on a career path and stuck to it for more than one move. This time, he was trying philosophy. He liked the idea that there were no job openings for philosophy majors. He would end up working for Esme and her architecture company, again; that was his first degree. I do not understand why he does not just get a re-fresher in that if that is what he wants to do. It was something about there being no challenge in repeating a degree he already had. I tried to convince him that things change in a hundred years. He just laughed.

I, on the other hand, would pretend to be one of those freakily smart people who graduated undergrad by the age fourteen and med-school by eighteen. I would start out with my residency, and then take a job at the local hospital, finally avoiding high school. We had no parents with us this time, so we would all have to start as adults. Yes!

We were settling into our old home, from before the move to Forks. After seventy years, hopefully no one would be left alive to recognize us. If they were, Rose, Em, and I would have to pretend to be our own grandchildren.

"I miss Alice and Jazz," Emmett said. "Remember the first time they went to high school with us after joining the family?" Jasper's control was still quite poor, so he decided to go the entire four years without speaking to avoid breathing. "Carlisle explained to the teachers that Jazz had come from an abusive family and didn't talk." I let on that Jasper's real mother used to beat him if he made a peep. And with all those scars, especially the ones on his arms and wrists that were visible even to human eyes, the story spread like wildfire. "Jazz spent the entire four years signing his answers to any questions he was asked. Even signed a few speeches." The rest of us also learned sign language that year, in order to translate for Jasper. Alice still likes to translate things into sign language in order to keep from thinking about things she does not want me to know.

"Remember how after he spent four years in high school pretending he couldn't speak, he went on to four years in undergrad pretending he couldn't speak?" Rose was thinking about how she had to translate his speech in humanities for him.

I had to do most of his translating, because I was in his history classes with him. "Yeah, I remember. Then he went on to get a position as a history professor, and signed all of his lectures!" The University had hired a translator for him.

Nessie, Bella, and Jacob loved to hear the stories of what us Cullen kids got up to in the olden days. "Didn't anyone think it was odd that Jasper could hear, but not talk?" Jacob thought Jasper's disability would call attention to us.

"Nope. It was on file as a disability, the school was forced to over-look it and treat him as normally as possible," Emmett explained.

"A few of the students thought it was odd… Especially the one who over-heard him whisper something to Alice that one time," I reminisced, unpacking the last box.

"Remember their very first day of school?" Rose was still appreciative of Jasper's ditching ability.

"Who can ever forget? We spent the next four years pretending Alice had epilepsy!" Emmett laughed.

"Why?" Nessie had to ask.

"Well, after a few hours of school Jazz decided that was enough being around humans for the day," Rose explained. "He decided that he was going to leave early, take Alice with him, and… they were still newly weds back then."

"Don't remind me." I had seen the whole disturbing episode. "As soon as Jazz decided this, the vision of the two of them hit Alice. And then, Jazz used his gift to um…well amplify Alice's emotional state."

"It looked like she was having a seizure. And before the teacher could respond, Jazz had picked Alice up and Left," Emmett explained to Bella, Nessie, and Jacob.

"I had to explain to the teacher that Alice had epilepsy and was having a seizure. And that Jazz was taking her home to Carlisle." Jasper really should have kept his emotions to himself that day.

"Wasn't anyone suspicious?" Bella threw off her shield for a moment. She was thinking of trying something similar with me next time we end up in high school.

"Well, Carlisle got a call home, but he explained it away as epilepsy, just as I had earlier. And since we were already claiming Jazz had been abused, we decided to go for it and say Alice came from a psych ward," I explained. "The locals were actually less suspicious because they had a reason for Alice and Jazz's strange behavior."

"And after that, any time Jazz felt like ditching, he just induced one of Alice's 'seizures,'" Emmett added, laughing at the memory.

"You have to admit, it was a good excuse for him to get Alice out of class with him. If he had just claimed to feel sick, Alice would be stuck in class," Rose said appreciatively.

"And without Alice, Jazz would have had nothing to do with all that time," Emmett chuckled.

"Why don't we call them and see how they are doing?" Bella suggested.

During a lengthy phone call, we learned that everyone seemed to be settling in fine on their end. We agreed that Alice and Jasper, and Carlisle and Esme would visit Alaska once a month. And that Rose, Emmett, Bella, and I would visit them once a month. Just as long as Zikare and Zakaira are isolated from our larger family, the plan should work.

Alice was fairly excited about a vision she had of Allison explaining the science of human aging. Which genes were important and what alleles and gene expression levels would result in a longer life span; it could easily be doubled in the next ten years if someone gave the humans a few hints. And which chemicals should be added to anti-wrinkle crèmes to make them really work.

Alice was planning on going into biological research in human aging, to give the humans a few suggestions. "Just think," she said. "In twenty years, humans could live to the age of two hundred and be wrinkle free to the age of sixty! We could double the time we spend in any one place before we would look too young!" Allison's knowledge did seem to be coming in handy… maybe a know-it-all in the family would not be such a bad thing after all.

After the phone call, we went over to the Denali's. Tanya and Jason were still in the newlywed stage and were all over each other, so I cleared my throat as I walked in. Hopefully Tanya would remember that I was a mind-reader and stop thinking about Jason that way within a three mile radius of me. Jason, on the other hand, did not seem aware of me, so I introduced myself. "Hi, I'm Edward, the mind-reader." That seemed to help. Jason at least made an effort to control his thoughts.

Garrett and Kate had been together almost as long as Bella and I, and they both remembered my talent. They stopped thinking about last night as soon as I walked in. I nodded to them in appreciation.

Eleazar and Carmen had been together such a long time that they were not even thinking those types of thoughts when I came in.

Rosalie was remembering the Denali's last visit to our home. Bella and Rose had their latest killer robots and put on a show for the family. Bella's bot had a flame torch and a flamethrower, making it spectacularly stunning to watch. And much more dangerous to vampires than Rose's bot. But, Rose's bot was flame resistant, so it was able to brave the heat, and bring a chainsaw arm down on Bella's bot.

Bella then brought out her second bot, which spit acid and some sticky substance, had a trash compacter arm, a circular saw arm, and two chainsaw arms. The acid corroded the electronics on Rose's bot, while the sticky goo jammed the chainsaw arm. The circular saw arm and one of the chainsaw arms of Bella's bot moved in for the kill. Rose's bot was a pile of scrap before the trash compacter arm moved in. Rose thought her second bot might do better, but it too ended up a compact ball of metal in the trash compacter arm.

Kate and Garrett had gotten really into the show and Rose was thinking, 'I might be able to convince them to join in and build their own bots.' Occasionally, Rose and Bella convinced Emmett and Jacob to join in the robot wars. 'With six people making bots, it will be a real war.' "Kate, would you care to see my latest killer robot? This one is acid proof."

This caught Garrett's interest right away. "That sounds wonderful."

Jacob and Bella overheard and agreed to go with. "Have fun with your death machine!" I exclaimed happily, giving Bella a kiss on the forehead.

But, this left me alone with Jason. He really was having trouble controlling himself. I would have to ask Bella to shield him from me for the rest of our stay… maybe Tanya too. "Jason? Have you seen the killer robots? It really is great fun to watch them fight."

"No. How about it Tanya, care to watch?"

"Sure. Let's go." And with that, Tanya and Jason's dirty thoughts followed out the door and out of hearing range.

Nessie was off with Carmen, and Eleazar was reading a book, so it was just Emmett and myself. Emmett was thinking about what he wanted to do to Rosalie tonight. "Stop it!" I hissed.

'Whatever Edward. You know you and Bella are planning on doing the same tonight… Unless you really are impotent,' Emmett thought.

Not that again. Well, defense if the best offense, so I decided to bring up Emmett's own struggle with impotency… "Speaking of which, remember when Jazz first moved in and you could not…?" I asked, trailing off in case Nessie could hear me.

Emmett knew what I was talking about immediately. 'Hey! That wasn't my fault! Jazz was playing with my emotions. Making me not horny. As soon as Rose and I got away from him, my little man was just fine.'

I had liked Alice from the first time she jumped on me and hugged me, but Jasper I was not so fond of. He was dangerous and a liability to our way of life. He had such poor self-control and wanted to live our vegetarian life style for such different reasons than the rest of us. He did not value human life like us; he could not stand the emotions as he killed them. He would just as easily agree to a diet of brain dead humans, had Alice suggested it. He was only there for Alice, so I was wary of him. Carlisle ignored my concerns and said Jasper just needed a little help sticking to the diet, and he would stick by him as long as he was willing to keep trying.

And Jasper had lived such a different life. He clearly was uncomfortable in our house, because he was always in a defensive position in front of Alice and he always calculated the nearest escape route when entering a room. It made me uneasy, but Jasper and I had bonded fairly quickly. All it took was Rosalie and Emmett, being well, Rose and Em. Emmett and Rosalie were constantly going at it in their room. It was horrible.

Jasper, Alice, and I were in the living room, when he thought at me, 'Are they always this bad?' I had nodded in assent. 'Do you mind if a put a stop to it in the house?'

"Be my guest," I had replied.

Jasper changed the mood within the house to a non-sexual one. I could hear the silence upstairs. Then Rosalie asked, "What's going on?"

I had kept Jasper's secret, pretending that neither of us were involved. After that, Rose and Emmett left the house before starting their evenings.

Jasper was eventually ruled to be the cause, but he insisted he could not control his gift. He apologized, and even offered to leave with Alice whenever Rosalie and Emmett wanted some alone time. I had been against this idea, preferring Rosalie and Emmett to leave and Rosalie and Jasper ended up bonding over how big of a jerk I was being.

"Sure, Sure," I replied to Emmett in a condescending tone, something I had picked up from Bella. "Bella and I have never had problems with that around Jasper."

Emmett was easy to goad into a fight and he was fuming already! 'Should we take this outside?'

"Yes. We do not want to wear out our welcome by destroying their house."

We went outside and wrestled. Emmett was getting better with all of Jasper's lessons. He even caught me off guard once as he made a move without thinking about it. Jasper had gotten so good at fighting without thinking that he often won nowadays.

And so, for a time, the twelve of us, split between our two covens, lived in peace, unnoticed by the humans, in the Alaskan wilderness.


	10. Chapter 8

Edward's POV:

Alice called to warn us of the Volturi, because they had decided to pay us a visit. Caius would send two parties: Jane, Alec, Heidi, and Demetri to check on Carlisle's Coven, and Felix, Santiago, and Bastien to check on the Denali Coven. It was clear from their actions that they knew Bella was with the Denalis. Why else would they send the three Bella was immune to after Carlisle? And why would they send Heidi anywhere, period?

Alice assured me that everything would be fine, just as long as we all stuck to the plan. Zikare and Zakaira lived next door to Carlisle's Coven, so the Volturi would not notice that we were keeping pets. We would go about our lives as normal, except that we would refrain from interacting with the humans. Esme was even having the house cleaned to eliminate the stench of human.

Alice could see the Volturi Guard's arrival. She knew which paths they would take and which humans they would question. Jane and Alec would pay a visit to Carlisle's teaching hospital and question the Dean of Medicine. Demetri would go door to door, questioning the neighbors. Alice arranged for Zikare and Zakaira to be away on holiday during the visit and luckily, the Dean and the neighbors were not aware of the human pets, and so there would be no danger in their questioning.

I was worried that Jane might use her gift against Carlisle's Coven, given that Bella was not there to protect them. I even suggested sending Bella over for a visit to coincide with Jane's arrival. But, Alice assured me that Aro had specifically ordered Jane not to use her gift against any of the vampires with Carlisle, unless provoked first. This was because Carlisle and Aro were old friends, and also because Carlisle had reduced his coven size and was therefore a reduced threat to the Volturi. It was Aro's way of showing his appreciation for his friend.

The biggest danger was on our side. The Denali Coven was already large, with six members. Bella, Rosalie, Emmett, Nessie, Jacob, and myself added another six, for a total of twelve. That was far too many vampires in one place to be tolerated. Alice instructed us that it was vital we appear as two neighboring covens, not one united one.

So, in preparation for the arrival of Felix and his ilk, we made sure to visit and interact with our vampiric neighbors as little as possible. The Guard would find our scent trails, notice the age, and conclude that we rarely interact. They would go first to Tanya's house to question the Denalis. The Denalis would claim to be friendly with us, but that we were a separate coven, just as Alice insisted. Alice saw the interview going quite well.

After the Guard finished with Tanya's family, they came to our house. I could hear their thoughts from miles away. I really dislike Felix, who was remembering how tasty Bella smelled as a human. When the three vampires emerged from the woods, the six of us were waiting on our porch. They emerged in formation, with Felix's hulking figure taking point and Santiago and Bastien on his flanks.

Bastien, Santiago, and Felix were clad in the signature dark gray capes typical of the Guard. Heidi, however, was dressed in a sex suit, just as she had been the last time we had seen her in Volterra. It was quite inappropriate for the given location, as it was freezing and she was practically naked. She would draw the attention of any human she crossed.

I raised my eyebrow at her trying to convey my concern regarding her inappropriate attire. Heidi noticed my look, but misinterpreted it.

'I know, not your type. Would you be more turned on if I came in a piano costume music boy?' Aro had obviously shared some of my past with his guard. I wonder what else he told them about me? I shook my head, and her thoughts continued, 'No? Not into pianos anymore now that you've found your Bella? Hmm, I wonder if she knows about the piano?' Here I shook my head again. 'You haven't told her? What are you waiting for, one of us to tell her? I wonder if she'll be jealous of the piano. Tell me, piano lover, how does the piano feel about you cheating on it with Bella?'

I turned my attention from Heidi to Santiago and Bastien, hoping the former would drop the subject without spilling the beans. Santiago was a lesser Guard member who had been present both when Bella, Alice, and I had journeyed to Volterra, as well as after Nessie's birth when the Volturi came to us. He had no special talent, but was just another large bulky vampire, not unlike Felix.

Bastien, however, was a new recruit and I had a feeling that he was searched out among the humans specifically because he had an offensive talent immune to Bella's shield. All three of them were trying not to think about Bastien's talent, but Bastien could not help but let slip his thoughts. I raised my eyebrow at him to acknowledge that I knew all about his bone breaking skill.

As soon as Bastien realize he had blown his secret, he gave up on the not thinking about it endeavor completely. And then I was able to discern just how correct my earlier hunch had been. Not only had Aro specifically sent his Guard out to search humans for a new talent, but he was hoping that his Guard would find some fault with our family on this expedition in order to test out Bastien's abilities on my wife.

I scowled at Bastien's thoughts, barring my teeth to show that no attack upon my wife would be tolerated. "Greetings Felix, Bastien, Santiago, and Heidi! What brings you this way?" I asked out loud, ending my silent conversation with Santiago before his unspoken thoughts triggered a fight before the talking even began.

"Oh, you know how paranoid Caius is. He seemed to think there was a coven of twelve 'round these parts."

"Not that I am aware of. Just my coven of six, and Tanya's coven of six down the way."

"So you and Tanya aren't joined in a plot to overthrow the Volturi?" Felix asked.

"Of course not! We are a peace-loving coven. We would not wish to rule, even if we disliked the Volturi, which we do not. We greatly appreciate that Aro, Caius, and Marcus keep us safe; not to mention their lovely Guard. If it were not for all of you, vampires would run wild and expose us all. Or, form newborn armies and attack. Either way, we would not be able to live our simple life hiding amongst the live-stock."

"Your words and actions disagree. Why have you moved in with Denali Coven then?" Bastien asked.

"We have not moved in with them. We moved back to our old house. We lived here once last century, and thought to return. There were too many of us living with Carlisle and we could not keep the peace with such a large number. So, we broke into two groups. Three stayed with Carlisle to blend in with the humans and the other six of us came here.

"Jasper, who has no self-control, stayed, so that Carlisle could help him stick to the diet. And of course, their mates are with them. The rest of us split off, but as the others have never lived on their own, Carlisle has asked that I stay with them," I said indicating Emmett and Rosalie. This statement was mostly true. Although Rosalie and Emmett had moved out of the house and gone on extensive honeymoons, they had never broken away from our coven. And Jasper's control, although far from perfect, had improved as of late, but Aro was not aware of that.

"My daughter and her mate are with us temporally, to spend time with us for a few years. We are really just a coven of four with visiting adult children. We chose Alaska and to be neighbors with the Denalis, so that they could help us with the transition to independence. They are much older than ourselves and are an excellent source of wisdom.

"Let me assure you, that although we live near the Denali Coven, and are allied with them, we are not one coven. That is just too many vampires to co-exist. In fact, we have been here too long already. Nessie and Jacob are planning on traveling south soon. Rosalie, Emmett, Bella, and myself will head east, to the continental United States. We will very shortly be a coven of four. You need not worry about us," I reiterated.

"We believe your story, for now, so we'll leave you in peace. Be that as it may, we'll come back to check on you. If you haven't been truthful, and we find that all sixteen of you have joined up in opposition to us, we'll eliminate you," Felix warned.

"Sixteen would never work. However, I must tell you that we are still friendly with Carlisle's Coven as well. We plan on visiting them from time to time. You may even find the four of us living with them for a few years at a time, before we break up again. You will not find all sixteen of us living in the same town, as I have said. But, you should not take our large numbers as a sign of aggression, because we mean the Volturi no harm," I replied.

"We'll allow your coven to rejoin Carlisle's from time to time. Just as long as it's like you said, and the Denali Coven doesn't join you," Felix said, turning to leave.

"Don't forget Felix, the lawn-mower we ran into?" Santiago reminded his leader.

"Oh yes. We came in from the south and weren't expecting to cross paths with any humans. I know you prefer if we don't slake our thirst in your territory, but it was a complete accident," Felix began.

"What was an accident?" Rosalie hissed ready to pounce. Emmett stepped up and grabbed her arm, preparing to hold her back if she lost her temper.

"When we crossed the baseball diamond south of this place, we came across a human mowing the grass. Bastien drank him. He's still fairly young and all. No harm intended. Don't worry, no one saw us and we disposed of the body properly."

"Bastien! You. Drank. Julio? Do you know how hard it is to convince Mexican laborers to come this far north just to mow our grass?" Rosalie asked outraged. "They hate snow!" Rosalie always was melodramatic and she always could come across as insensitive when thinking about how something affected her, but from her thoughts I could tell that she was devastated for the loss of our human grounds keeper.

"Calm down babe. We'll get another Julio," Emmett soothed.

"Oh, he was yours? So sorry about that. Well, farewell my friends," Felix said, turning once more.

Bastien gave a little wave, Santiago nodded, and Heidi winked and thought, 'Later piano boy.' And with that, the three members of the Volturi Guard disappeared back into the forest from which they came.

"Well, we better start spreading the rumor that Julio was sick of the cold and went back to the land of eternal sun-shine to look for work picking grapes," Emmett broke the silence that ensued after The Guard left.

"He had a family back in Mexico," Rosalie added with a hint of sadness, her previous anger almost evaporated. Out of our entire family, Rosalie was the one with the bleeding heart for humans. Sure we all respected and valued human life, but Rosalie took her human worship to a whole new level.

"We can notify them that he suffered a snow related accident and send some money," Bella tried to comfort Rosalie.

"And I can start looking for a new Gardener," Jacob added and Nessie smacked him on the head.

"Not helping, Jake," Nessie replied. "Come on, Auntie, let's go inside and make funeral arrangements." Rosalie complied and allowed herself to be led back inside.

"Emmett, I'm going to check out the scene of the crime and make sure nothing looks suspicious. From what I saw in their thoughts, they left the mower out. I should put it away," I told my brother preparing to wrap up loose ends.

"Sure. Go ahead, Rose will calm down in a few minutes and be fine," my favorite brother reassured me.

"I'll be right back, Bella," I said giving my mate a farewell kiss. She nodded and I took off to investigate the damage.


	11. Chapter 9

Edward's POV:

While Bella and myself were in Alaska, Zikare, Zakaira, Alice, and Jasper had graduated from undergrad, gotten PhDs, done two Post-Docs each, and had finally settled as assistant professors at yet another university. They moved so often because of their careers that no one noticed that Alice and Jasper were not aging. Plus, Alice, Jasper, Carlisle, and Esme always claimed to have had a face lift right before moving to the new town.

Alice and Zakaira were even in a laboratory focusing on understanding human aging. Alice had already slipped some of Allison's knowledge into mainstream science. And with this knowledge, several laboratories around the world were making legitimate progress in slowing the process of human aging.

The biggest setback was the state of genetic engineering techniques available for human modifications. Some ethical dilemma had caused delays in their development (see note 1). Alice was currently feeding advanced techniques to alter epigenetic modifications into a lab in Hong Kong.

Epigenetics is the study of DNA modifications: the DNA molecule itself, as well as the histones, which package DNA, are marked with small molecular tags that change gene expression levels. Manipulating these tags was the last piece of the puzzle the humans needed. Once epigenetics was properly understood, human germ line modifications could begin.

And while Alice and Zakaira were working on human aging, Jasper and Zikare were in a theoretical Physics lab. Jasper was slipping her Allison's knowledge of the Universe. They were writing some pretty out there papers on energy creation during universal singularities and explosions, like the big bang, and energy conversion to matter during universal singularities and implosions (see note 2).

The Universe was locked in an ever-spiraling cycle of explosions and implosions, preventing entropy from taking hold (see note 3). This knowledge did not fit with my worldview, or that of Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, or Emmett for that matter, as we were all raised to believe in the creation of the universe by a supreme being. But Bella was fine with it. And Alice had no human memories of religion to contradict Allison. According to visions of Jackson, Alice's parents had not been particularly religious.

Jasper had been skeptical when Alice first told him of Allison's knowledge of the Universe. But, he whole heartedly believed everything Alice told him, so he was quickly convinced. Zikare and Zakaira grew up with Alice and knew she was always right; they never even questioned the implications of their research. And so, the four of them went on shifting scientific paradigms.

At first the Denalis were curious as to why the humans never came with Carlisle's group for visits during the holidays. We explained the humans' absence as worry over proximity to Jason: we did not trust him to not kill our pet humans. Whenever we went to visit Carlisle's group, Nessie and Jacob went to visit the Quileutes, again avoiding contact with the twins. So we were successful in managing to keep the humans away from our supernatural world.

And as they grew older, we let on that they were sick and growing sicker. Their AIDs was cured, but the Denalis and the Quileutes did not know that. After a few years, we even announced their deaths and held a funeral. It was all very convincing, but did not explain why we let them die instead of changing them. Carlisle explained that away as a choice he had given the girls on their death bed: they had chosen early death instead of an eternity of thirst, and we loved them so much that we respected their wishes.

So neither the Quileutes nor Denalis were curious as to what had become of our humans. And we were with the Denali's in Alaska for forty years before we had to move on. Nessie and Jacob decided to go south, to the Amazon, to catch up with Zafrina and her coven. Nahuel and his sisters, Jennifer and Maysun, went with them, because they wanted to visit their other sister and her mate, who had settled in the area. And since their alpha and their mates were going, the rest of the pack went as well: the locals were growing very suspicious of the eternally young shape-shifters.

Nessie, Jacob, the pack, and their mates spent the next few decades traipsing around the Amazon and gorging themselves on pumas and other wildlife. Emmett even tried Anaconda when we went to visit them- it was awful. Zafrina and Nessie were like two peas in a pod and were immediately best friends.

Jacob was upset by the lack of killer robots in the Amazon. It was only weeks before he started importing chainsaws and robot circuitry. Jacob had finally bonded with Rose when we were in Alaska; he had really gotten into the killer robots with Bella and Rose. Garrett, Jason, and Kate had gotten quite into the sport as well. So Jacob was disappointed to leave behind his fellow robot warriors. But, Seth, Embry, and Nahuel quickly caught robot fever and joined in. Now they regularly host epic robot wars in the middle of a clearing in the jungle.

And while Nessie was with Jacob in the Amazon, Bella and I were back with Carlisle in the continental United States. It was important that we move back, as we were quickly approaching our one hundredth anniversary. We had had several discussions regarding what to do with our eggs. But, we still had not decided. So, Carlisle and Esme were preparing to take in two sickly foster children, just in case.

In addition to two new foster children, Emmett and Rosalie were moving with us as well. And although Carlisle and Esme had been living in the same town as Alice, Jasper, Zakaira, and Zikare, they had recently moved away leaving the others behind. So it would just be the six of us with the two new pets.

Alice and Jasper had stayed with their humans in order to give them a sense of continuity. Plus, the humans did not want to leave their plush professorships at the local University. During their academic career, Alice and Zakaira had made real progress curing aging. Carlisle and Esme claimed to be among the first to receive the latest anti-wrinkle cream. Zakaira and Zikare really were among the first to try it, and they still appeared to be in their mid-thirties, though they had just reached their sixtieth birthday.

The twins had had a good life. They had gotten married, divorced, remarried, and had five children between the two of them. They were content to continue their research for the next forty years and stay with their human families. The parasites caused them to appear overweight, but that was common in sixty year old humans anyway.

Esme and Carlisle had decided to move because they were adopting again. If we are going to be in the same place for another twenty years, they need to start over in a new location, or the other humans would catch on that we do not age. They did not go that far; just a two hours' drive from Alice and Jasper. Esme had already built the main house.

As for humans to adopt, Carlisle had found an orphan with Leukemia at his new hospital. He was just two years old and dying all alone. Carlisle thought he did not have long at all. The paper work for Esme and Carlisle to become foster parents was already complete, so they were legally the boy's guardians. But, with his illness, they could not bring him home from the hospital. And they were still looking for a second child.

When Bella, Rosalie, Emmett, and I joined Carlisle and Esme, I took a job at Carlisle's new hospital, claiming to be his younger brother. Bella took a job at the local biotech company, using her first undergraduate degree. Rosalie opened up a car repair shop with Emmett, who was pretending to be Bella's brother this time around.

We asked Alice to look for when Bella and I would disgorge our eggs. Alice had seen it in a vision: I would not puke until a month after our anniversary and Bella not for a month after that. So I used the good news to plan a spectacular getaway for Bella and myself. We went back to Isle Esme, spent a month on the island, even getting a chance to stop over and visit Nessie. But, Alice called to warn us that I would blow any day now, so we had gotten on the first plane back to the States.

When we got back, Alice was waiting for us at the new house. Emmett had gone to spend some time with Jasper, as they really missed each other. In-between wrestling, chess, and hunting, they were keeping an eye on the twins.

I was still surprised the Volturi had not found out about our human pets. After sixty years, surely they would have found us out by now. They had checked up on us several times after that first time in Denali. But we were still separated into two smaller covens, and Jacob and Nessie had gone south, so they thought we were less of a threat. And again, they did not notice the humans, probably because we always have lived so close to humans. It really helped that the twins had their own separate houses with their respective families.

"Is today the day?" Bella asked Alice as we walked into the house.

"No, not today. Maybe tomorrow. But soon," Alice replied. "I can see you two still have not decided. Are the two of you really going to spend the next hundred years puking into a paint bucket?"

"I hope not," Bella stated. "Can you see what will happen if we choose implantation?"

"A two year old boy named Xavier will be cured of Leukemia. Otherwise, he dies in six months. That's all I can see."

"Look for what Allison knows," I pleaded. Surely Allison, being all knowing, would know what we should do.

Alice searched the future for a vision of Allison. "Allison says that this is a personal question. She only knows facts. And that I will not be able to see a vampiric baby until after the egg is disgorged."

"What made you and Jazz so sure you wanted Allison and Jackson?" Bella wondered.

"Jasper just looked at his egg and new he loved it. That he would die for it."

"That's how I felt about Renesmee. But that was different. Renesmee was real to me. Eggs aren't," Bella replied. I hugged Bella, to let her know that what she was feeling was okay and perfectly normal. I felt the same way.

We spent two days with Alice and I realized just how much I had missed her. I hoped we would not split up again as Alice told me of her visions of Jackson. She would sit around the fire, with Jackson in her lap, while Jasper would sit next to her holding Allison. And Jackson would tell of his visions of Alice's past.

Alice's first word had been Jasper's name. Her parents wondered who Jasper was initially, but quickly decided he was just an imaginary friend. They loved their adorable daughter and were able to overlook little things like that.

Alice had been a lovely child and one day an elderly lady stopped Alice's mother on the street to ask the child's name. Alice was just eighteen months old when she answered, "I'm Alice." Her mother had been shocked, as her child's name was Mary. That was the first time either of her parents questioned whether they were doing the right thing for their daughter by pretending she was normal.

To make matters worse, Alice would wake up several nights a week screaming. She would have horrible nightmares filled with visions of Jasper. As soon as Alice began talking she began to tell of the visions she had in her dreams. She told of Jasper, a soldier who was trapped as a pawn in someone else's game. At hearing about this revelation, Jasper suggested that Alice had dreamed him into life.

By the age of two, Alice began to draw her dreams: she was quite a gifted artist. She would draw battlefields full of death and blood. The headless torsos particularly horrified her mother. But her parents were more scared for their daughter than scared of her. And over time, Alice learned not to speak of what she saw. She even stopped informing her parents of little things, like the weather and when Grandma was coming over. And as long as she kept her mouth shut and hid her drawings, her parents were not aware that anything abnormal was going on.

Alice's father even valued his daughter advice. She was lucky, if not entirely normal. Early on, he had learned to ask Mary's opinion and act on it. He was a merchant who bought and sold pearls, and in that line of work, a lot of it was luck. Which beach town should Daddy visit today in order to purchase the best pearls? Where should Daddy go today to sell these pearls? Who will give Daddy the best offer?

Mary was always right. And who cares if she thought her name was Alice? As far as he was concerned, after that time he took his baby girl with him to New Orleans and she led him to purchase that giant pearl the size of a golf ball, and then insisted he sell it to a man in Brandon for twenty times the buying price, her name _was _Alice. He had made more off of that single sale than he normally made in a year! He had her name legally changed to Mary Alice after that.

So everything had been going fine for Alice, despite the visions, until around the age of eighteen. That is when her parent's marriage had started falling apart. And instead of getting a divorce, which was difficult back in those days, her father decided to hire a hit man. Alice saw her mother's death, but had been powerless to stop it.

But when her father remarried, his new wife let slip little hints that she had been involved. When Alice confronted her father about her stepmother's involvement in her mother's death, he pretended to be outraged. But later she saw her father paying the man who had murdered her mother to slit her own throat. She ran to her only living relatives, an aunt and uncle who blamed her for eerily predicting their son's death, but they did not believe her. Instead they took her father's side and helped arrange for Alice to be sent to a mental institution, where the shock treatment had destroyed her ability to retain memories.

Alice told Bella, Rosalie, Esme, Carlisle, and myself this story as if it were not about her. This story was about someone else. I could see from Alice's thoughts that she was not personally connected to this tale as if she had lived it. It was just a story. The shock treatments had erased all memories of these events along with the pain.

Alice was just finishing the part where the vampire who had cared for her in the asylum had been killed by James, and she was left alone in the forest to complete the change, when I started to feel sick to my stomach. Carlisle must have been able to tell, because he ordered everyone outside.

Alice retrieved the bucket this time, while Bella stood by me, with her hand on my shoulder. I did not like how I looked in their thoughts of me, so I was trying to tune them out.

When I was done, I held a blood-smeared egg in my hands and looked for Alice's thoughts. What would this egg be if I chose to germinate it? Alice was searching the future. She saw two possible futures, in the first one Bella and I kept the eggs in the bucket of blood.

And the second vision: we would name her Elizabeth Marie after my mother and Bella's grandmother. I liked that. She would look like Bella. I liked that too. She would be gifted. Were all vampiric babies gifted? She would be a more powerful mind reader than myself. Able to read all thoughts a person has ever had, like Aro. But, like myself, she did not require touch. She was even a mild shield. Not as strong as Bella. No, she would not be able to protect others. But her own mind would be safe from Aro and myself.

Aro would want this child, I knew. But, the child would be able to run. No tracker would be able to find her, not even Demetri. And if she was captured… I did not want to think about that possibility… but her thoughts would remain safe.

I looked at Bella. "You want to keep it, don't you?" she asked smiling at me.

I saw the visions in Alice's mind shift. The future where we preserved the egg in the bucket disappeared. Now, we only had the future with Elizabeth.

"Yes," I replied. How could I not want someone who was so much a part of Bella?

"Well, should we perform the implantation today?" Carlisle asked.

Alice searched for the future before answering, "Yes."

Carlisle, Bella, and I left immediately for the hospital and waited in Xavier's room for him to wake from his nap. I pulled out the zip-lock bag full of blood, removed the egg, and handed it to Carlisle for implantation. A week later, Xavier's blood test came back normal. After an exhaustive series of test, his Leukemia was ruled to be in full remission. Another human life saved by vampiric parasitism, and best of all, Esme and Carlisle finally got to bring him home from the hospital.

With the first implantation complete, Carlisle and I redoubled our effort in our search for another child to adopt. We did not want to take another one from the local area, because we did not want the locals to realize we had cured two terminally ill children. That would be too much of a coincidence. I found a baby with Menkes disease just two hours' drive away.

Menkes disease is a genetic disease affecting copper metabolism. If copper supplementation treatment is started shortly after birth, survival is prolonged. But, as infants are not regularly screened for Menkes, most are not diagnosed until it is too late, and the children die of brain degeneration before they reach their tenth birthday.

This child was only thirteen months old, and had just been diagnosed with the disease. But the parents had no wish to watch as their child died and opted to put him up for adoption instead. I did a little surveillance on the family, to make sure that they would not change their minds and come looking. The mother was already pregnant again, convinced that it would be easier to start over and have the next one tested right away for the disease.

Plus, the disease is X-linked, so only fifty percent of their sons would be affected. They were hoping for a girl this time and were even considering terminating the pregnancy if the prenatal screen revealed another boy with Menkes. And with their new child on the way, they would not come looking for their first child and will assume him dead after a few years.

The child with Menkes was perfect. The only thing I did not like about him was his name: James. That would have to be changed. I still hated James for trying to kill my Bella. Carlisle's request to take in James as a foster child was granted immediately. Who better to care for a dying baby than a doctor?

Alice could see the adoption would go through in record time. The state did not want to pay the medical bills of a dying baby. James' adoption would be finalized even before Xavier's. Esme had decided on the name Noah, as it was her father's. We were already calling the baby by the new name, even though the name change was not yet granted. Bella's egg was implanted into him right away.

Alice had searched for the future, and seen that the egg was a boy, and Bella would name him Edward III. He looked too much like me for my own taste. I would have preferred him to look just like Bella. He did have Bella's brown hair, but that was about it. And like Elizabeth, Edward III also had a skill.

At this point I asked Alice to ask Allison in the future if all vampiric babies were indeed skilled. The answer had been a yes. But, non-talented parents would produce only mildly talented offspring. Already talented parents produced very talented offspring. And the most talented of us, produced extremely talented children.

Allison and Jackson would be considered average among Jasper and Alice's possible offspring. I had to ask her what the least useful talent they were capable of producing was: it was the ability to taste the emotions of the future. Alice had joked that if she ever barfs up that egg, she might just place it on her bookshelf. Still, it would be useful to know how one will feel in the future. Even if one had to taste the emotions instead of feel them…

Edward III would read minds like myself, but not be as powerful a mind-reader as Elizabeth. He would also be a shield like Bella, a slightly more powerful shield than Elizabeth, but not as strong as Bella. He would be able to shield anyone he was touching. In addition, Edward III would be a telepath that could share his thoughts with others like Renesmee, but he did not require touch. He would not be able to send pictures, only words and sounds could be transmitted. It was like a non-mind-reader could hear any thoughts he wanted to share.

Bella had fallen in love with her egg at first sight. Now that the eggs were my own and Bella's, I really could tell the difference between them. Alice joked that both our eggs looked identical, while her and Jasper's eggs had character. I guess only a parent could tell their own eggs apart.

We did not bother to tell the locals about Noah's disease. He still tested positive, as it was a genetic disorder. But, his brain never started degenerating. His adoption was finalized before the state noticed that he was not dying.

1: The ethical dilemma in question refers to the human embryonic stem cell debate.

2: Universal singularities come in two forms: implosions and explosions. The big bang is an example of an universal explosion. In order for the universe to explode, it must be already imploded, therefore universal implosions must also exists. This is a set up for two jokes that will come later in the story, but it is otherwise unimportant.

3: The physics in this story is possible, but made up. Scientists are still debating whether or not the Universe is locked in an ever-spiraling cycle. Most tend to believe that it is not, but I think this is wishful thinking, so for the purposes of this story, it is.


	12. Chapter 10

Edward's POV:

When Noah and Xavier were thirteen, Esme and Carlisle went to Africa to adopt again. They had decided to find two more children suffering from AIDs, because the first two had turned out so well. However, Noah and Xavier, I thought had turned out rather spoilt.

Esme and Carlisle came back from Africa with six-month-old Tahira and her eighteen month old brother Taraji. Their mother had had eight children before dying of AIDs. Their father was sick and dying and relatives had taken in three of their older siblings. Another three of their siblings had been adopted by other couples; the three that were HIV negative. So this left just the youngest two, who were both HIV positive, in an orphanage in Kenya.

This time around Carlisle and Esme were ready for their eggs and vomited them up on the same day. Alice, Jasper, and their pet humans, stopped by for the disgorging. The humans were not allowed to watch of course, but since they were adults, they agreed to watch Noah and Xavier for Bella and myself so that we could be there for our parental figures.

Alice looked for their future and saw that Carlisle's egg was male with caramel brown hair. Carlisle would name him Aiden and he was talented, but not extremely so. Aiden would be a peace-loving man, like his father, but unlike Carlisle, he would actually be able to will peace into existence. It was a subtle gift, in that he would not be able to stop a world war. But once trained up a bit, he would be able to arrange for a secession of hostiles within a few yards distance. One would just not want to fight anymore, which would certainly be a useful talent. Aiden's egg was implanted into Taraji before Esme even disgorged her egg.

Carlisle II, Esme's egg, was disgorged only two hours later. Alice's visions had shown her a blond haired boy with another subtle talent. Carlisle II could heal dying humans, cure diseases, and replenish lost blood. But he would not be a strong healer. His powers would only make a small impact on patient survival, so modern medicine would have to be used in tandem with this gift.

Healing is not a particularly useful talent for a vampire to have, but his gift also worked on vampires. So if one of us had our head torn off, or some other injury, it would reattach or heal quicker in his presence. Carlisle saw promise in this talent and was already picturing himself at the hospital with his son at his side.

Jasper could not see the point in such a talent at all. 'What good would healing be on the battlefield? It's not like putting your head back on quicker will help. 'Either you lose your head or you don't.' But, Jasper was polite enough not to mention out loud what a useless gift he thought healing was.

I, however, thought healing would have come in useful when Bella was still human. Maybe even Renesmee or the wolves might benefit from it someday. Or, what if a human host was injured to the point of death? I would definitely give my life to save Noah or Xavier to ensure the life of Edward III and Elizabeth. Yes, a healer would come in useful.

That night after the implantation and after the humans went to bed, we had a family reunion, telling stories of our past in the living room. Bella was sitting on the couch to my right, with Emmett and Rosalie cuddled up on my left. Alice and Jasper were on the loveseat, and Esme was on Carlisle's lap in the recliner.

Carlisle started off by telling the story of Esme's newborn years. You would not believe it from her demeanor now, but my mother figure was a wild newborn and Emmett is the only newborn he has ever had that was worse. Carlisle had taken her north deep into the Arctic in an effort to keep her away from humans, but while taking her to hunt seals, she slipped away into the water.

Carlisle found her, eventually, terrorizing an Inuit village. Esme had come across a hunting party that was also hunting seals and had drunk six of the men, and killed another three so that they did not get away. But, they had two older boys with them, who were just learning to hunt, and Esme could not bare to harm them. Carlisle found her kneeling down among the corpses, while the two children clung to the corpses of their fathers.

Neither Carlisle nor Esme wanted to kill children, but they had seen what Esme had done, and leaving knowledgeable humans alive is against Volturi protocol. Luckily, Carlisle was a doctor and knew the exact amount of force required to render a human unconscious with amnesia, but still alive. He carried the limp forms back to their village and placed them into the nearest house, and all without making a sound.

Carlisle and Esme stayed around just long enough to establish that the boys really did have amnesia. But, they had to leave the area quickly when the elders realized that the entire hunting party had mysteriously disappeared, while the children had been miraculously returned unharmed, almost. The elders immediately ordered a search party.

The villagers searched the tundra until they found the abandoned sleds and dogs that had belonged to their hunters. From there they followed the blood smears to a polar bear cave where they found the remains of the three humans Esme had killed but not drank. Luckily the bears had played along with Carlisle's plan to blame it on the bears, and had eaten the corpses. The locals assumed that all of the hunting party had been taken down by bears, and the children had been rescued by the Gods. Thank goodness for human superstitions.

After having almost killed children, Esme was much more tame, but Carlisle took her further north all the same. So it was really hard for me to locate them when I returned from tying up a few loose ends at our last home. We had to clear out of there pretty fast with a fresh newborn, so Carlisle had just enough time to call up work and quit before he had fled with Esme. I had stayed to pack up our stuff, send it to the next place on our list, and close up the old house. We always had the next move preplanned in case of emergency, and as I was only three years old, newborn Esme was the first such emergency I had encountered.

I was feeling really proud of myself that I had managed to relocate and order new papers so quickly, when I realized that Carlisle and Esme were not where he said that they would be. It took me days to track their scent north to their new location, mostly because every time they entered the water, I lost the trail. And since there are a myriad of bodies of water in the Arctic, I lost their scent frequently.

Carlisle welcomed me back with open arms, grateful that I had taken care of everything, especially because he really needed my help keeping an eye on newborn Esme. And Esme feel in love with the idea of mothering me, so from then on she was on her best behavior; best behavior for a newborn that is. So the three of us stayed in the Arctic, drinking mostly seal, walrus, whale, and polar bear, as a happy family unit until Esme developed some self control.

After Carlisle told that story, Esme told the story of her first time pretending to be human. She was pretending to be my older sister and a stay at home wife after she and Carlisle had their first and only wedding. Esme took to the role of loving sister and doctor's wife like a fish to water, plus she was already three years old, so there really were no major incidents, and only a few funny stories.

Bella had already heard this story, so she was not strictly paying attention. Instead she was tracing designs on the back of my hand. Judging by the way she was biting her lip as Esme's tale came to an end, she was definitely up to something.

"Okay. So Edward's always telling me about all the trouble you all caused as newborns and in high school. But he never tells me _anything_ he has ever done wrong. So spill it. What's the worst thing he ever did to any of you?" Bella asked, confirming my suspicions: she wanted gossip on me.

"This one is all you, Jazz," Emmett replied gleefully.

"Definitely, Jazz," Rosalie chimed in.

"I have to agree. Edward was absolutely horrid to my Jazz," Alice added kissing the back of Jasper's right hand, which she held in hers.

"Okay. Let's hear it. What did Edward do?" Bella was not going to let this go without an answer.

Jasper was reluctant to share this story, but he gave in. "Alright, I'll tell you. It was the second time Alice and myself attended high school, and my first time breathing and speaking at school, so I went about with a look of obvious pain plastered on my face the whole three years. Between their emotions and their smell, teenage humans were my worst nightmare.

"It was our second year being there and I was a junior, while Edward was a sophomore. Edward had lost a bet to me the night before, was still upset about it, and desired revenge." I raised my eyebrow to indicate that he was not to tell Bella what the bet was over. She still had not found out about the piano incident and I wanted to keep it that way.

"So, I was in a particularly great amount of pain that day because I had not drunk in four days and a human named Justin Smith had been having a sexual fantasy about the girl sitting next to me all through my first period history class. Having to feel his emotions during said fantasies was absolutely, disgustingly, unbearable.

"Edward was in second period Spanish with Justin, who had noticed my murderous stare earlier. Justin asked Edward what was wrong with me… I'm still amazed that the human was able to work up the courage to ask. Edward's quite intimidating, but of the five of us, he's definitely the most approachable.

"Edward answered Justin by saying that I look like I'm in pain all the time because I was raped by my mother."

Bella gasped and punched my arm, "You didn't!"

"I did," I confirmed smiling at the memory. I had gotten my revenge on my brother for the piano bet.

"So by lunch Justin had told the _entire_ school what Edward had said. With our hearing we could tell that this was the _only_ topic of conversation in the lunch room that day."

"What did you do?" Bella gasped, still in shock.

"The only thing I could do. I stood up, walked to the middle of the cafeteria, stood on a chair, and said I had an announcement: 'It has come to my attention that my brother, Edward Cullen, claimed that I was raped by my mother. I assure everyone that this is _not_ the case. The sex was consensual and was with mi mama, Maria, my first foster mother. I was removed from that foster home and placed with my sister in the Cullen's home after the authorities found out. And I'd just like to reiterate that she was not my biological mother.'

"I thought I had sounded very convincing, given that I had made up the explanation on the spot, and it was my first time doing so. But, the emotions of the crowd were full of skepticisms, shock, and outrage. Apparently admitting to having had sex with ones ex-foster mother was not status quo. Luckily, Emmet had my back.

"He got up and announced that he had met Maria, that she was _hot_, and that he'd definitely 'do her.' Then Rosalie stood up and said that she knew for a fact that I'd been caught having sex with one of my many foster sisters, to which Emmett replied, 'You dawg,' and clapped me on my shoulder.

"Sleeping with your foster sister was much more acceptable, especially to the males, so I started feeling their emotions turning from confusion to admiration. At this point the humans hadn't realized that the foster sister Rosalie was referring to was Alice, and I didn't particularly want to point that out and drag Alice into this, so I was standing there in the middle of the cafeteria trying to decide what else to say to sway these teenagers in my favor.

"That's when Edward came to my rescue by stealing my wallet, removing a picture of Maria and myself kissing, and passing it around the humans. They saw how young and pretty she was and agreed with Emmett. After seeing that picture, the emotions among the remaining males changed from disgusted to appreciative. And the females went from outraged by my rape to pissed off because I was a pig," Jasper finished.

"Didn't you all have to move after that? I'm sure you had to have at least gotten a call home to your parents. And the school would call the police and report the 'rape,'" Bella said.

"No, we didn't have to move. Carlisle did get a call home in which he insisted that the authorities had already been notified of the incident." Here Carlisle nodded. "It was the late nineteen sixties, a time of peace and love, so I instantly became the most popular guy on campus. All of the guys started greeting me with 'my man' and wanting high fives."

"Wow. Edward, you really were horrible," Bella stated.

"And that isn't even the end of it. Edward was still mad at me, especially because his plan had backfired and now the male humans thought I was cool: he had only made me popular. He was on the school paper the next year; my senior year. He added the category 'Most likely to have an Oedipus complex' to the most likely to succeed page. Guess who won _that_ category!"

"He didn't," Bella said in a hushed voice.

"I did. Jasper's second high school year book is a permanent reminder of that day in the cafeteria," I replied, happy with myself for getting back at Jasper. I still think he deserved it for making me feel that way.

"And so _that_ was the worst thing Edward _ever_ did to me in high school," Jasper concluded.


	13. Chapter 11

Edwards POV:

Noah and Xavier were attending high school and Bella and I would have gone with them, but the humans already knew that we had completed our education. Instead, Bella, Esme, Carlisle, and I took turns waiting in the forest that surrounded the school, listening in. Tahira and Taraji were next door at the elementary school, so one vampire could watch all four humans.

Today was my turn to human-sit. I had the morning off from the hospital and would not have to go in until late tonight. I rarely had mornings off, so whenever I did, I always had to human-sit. We did try to give them some privacy and stay out of their lives, so we rarely mentioned that we knew what happened at school.

I knew a lot of things about the boys that I was not supposed to know. I knew that Xavier had three girlfriends at the same time last year and that none of them knew about each other. But then he got caught when Esme "accidentally" invited all three to his surprise birthday party. Oops.

I knew that Noah had cheated on his geometry test by writing a formula on his hand, but loved English. And that he had a crush on two of the latest R&B singers and had their swimsuit pictures taped to his locker. I knew that another boy had offered Noah weed in the boys bathroom and that he had refused, because Carlisle had told him not to do drugs.

And I knew that Xavier had paid Noah to write his English essay for him and used his calculator to store a cheat sheet for his Algebra II tests. He had a crush on two of the hottest actresses around, but his locker was tiled with pictures of sweet cars. I knew that Xavier had been invited to a party in which alcohol would be served, but had refused knowing that we would find out.

I knew that last month Noah had been in a fight with another boy named Keith over a pretty girl named Jenny. Noah had punched Keith in the face and given him a bloody nose, while Keith had gotten Noah hard in the gut and split his lip. But neither wanted to get in trouble for fighting, so they cleaned themselves up, pretended like nothing had happened, and did not get caught. The school did not find out, and we had to pretend not to know too.

When the humans misbehaved it was hard to pretend like we did not know and to not punish them. Esme had the hardest time with just letting her children get away with it. But, we had to pick and choose our battles: we could not reveal that we had super hearing and were eaves dropping on them. And if we knew too much, the humans would get suspicious.

Noah was the better behaved of the two boys, so the bathroom fistfight was not the worst of their shenanigans. I also knew that Xavier had gotten frisky with a girl who did not return his affection, and that was harder to ignore. I absolutely abhor men who disrespect women. I could not over-look that incident, even though he had not hurt her, so I kept a tight watch on the boy.

A week later, we were at the mall together, when he ran into the girl again. Again he tried to kiss her, and again she ran away. I took the opportunity to lecture him on the finer points of manners and being a gentleman. He never did that again.

So we always made sure to keep an eye out for opportunities in which we could legitimately catch the humans misbehaving. That way we could discipline them for all of the things they did not know we knew about as well. And we never revealed that we were watching. But watch we did, for we never knew when we would need to intervene for their own safety; humans can be very fragile.

Today was the first time I had had to intervene and let my presence be known. There was no way I could hide that I had been nearby when the incident occurred. Alice had not foreseen what would happen; how could she know that a teenager would be driving too fast in the student parking lot on his way back from lunch, when he had not decided to take that corner too fast until just moments before he did? Teenagers always drive too fast.

So it was a complete shock to me when I heard the screams, screeching brakes, and the thoughts of panic. I zeroed in on one particular human's thoughts: Xavier. He had been walking back to class with the victim after a lunch at Jack-n-the-Box across the street.

I was hidden on the edge of the forest, nearest the fast-food restaurant, so that I could still hear their thoughts and those from the elementary school. I always made sure to maintain a position equal distant between the four humans, so that I would be close enough to respond to all in case of an emergency.

Xavier's thoughts were panicked and terrified that his brother was dead: Noah was the boy who was hit. I could see the blood and guts in Xavier's mind as he screamed for help. I ran quickly so that the humans would not see me and materialized next to the car. This was _my_ son, Edward III, that would be killed if Noah died.

Before Xavier knew what was happening, I lifted the car off of Noah and began to assess the injuries. I stopped breathing and held my breath as his blood seeped into the pavement. He was losing too much blood, especially from a deep cut to his femoral artery. I removed my belt, and tied it around the wound, creating a tourniquet, to reduce the blood flow, hoping that I was not already too late.

I glanced up from Noah, just long enough to catch Xavier's gaze, and grunted, "Call 911, then Carlisle," and set back to work on Noah. Now that the bleeding from his leg was subsiding, the most critical injuries were clearly to his abdomen. Thankfully, I had my medical bag with me, as always.

I pulled out a pair of gloves and began to clean the wounds. One of them was fairly deep, although it was not bleeding heavily. I was concerned that the intestines, which were clearly visible through this gaping hole, were damaged. Ruptured intestines could cause necrosis or sepsis. Plus, the parasitic egg implants in the intestines, and the host parasite connection could be severed, causing death to both: the parasite cannot be removed without causing the death of the host.

I spent extra time examining the bulge in the duodenum where the egg was attached, looking for any signs of hemorrhaging or other damage. Luckily, the organ was intact and pristine, so I inserted it back into Noah's body cavity. It was the best I could do with the tools at hand, but I knew that this wound would have to be cleaned and closed surgerically in an operating room, not in a parking lot.

So I left the bowels and the open body cavity, placing a few sheets of gauze over the wound to prevent further contamination, and moved on to the next wound. The other wounds were all more superficial, requiring only stitching. I pulled out my needle and thread and got to work.

I was already done and bandaging the wounds for transport when the ambulance finally arrived. I took off my blood stained gloves and handed my boy over to the EMTs. It was only then that I had a chance to think about what was happening and something occurred to me: the parasite will likely show on any x-rays. It may even be found during exploratory surgery to examine the bowel injury, which seemed exceedingly likely, because I had just seen the bulge examing his bowel injury. Carlisle and I would have to be the surgeons in order to keep our secret.

I rode over to the hospital in the back of the ambulance with Noah and Xavier. The EMTs kept Noah stable, allowing me time to collect my thoughts. Xavier had confirmed that he had notified Carlisle and that he was already at the hospital waiting for us, so I pulled out my cell and dialed the familiar number, thankful that Xavier had been coherent enough to follow my orders.

"Carlisle, it's me. Noah will need surgery to repair a torn femoral artery and a deep gash in his abdomen. His bowels are intact and not damaged- the egg is fine. He lost a lot of blood and will need a transfusion," I listed too low and fast for Xavier to decipher.

"I'll be ready. I already scheduled an OR. I'm scrubbing up now. We should be able to handle the operation by ourselves, with an anesthesiologist and a few nurses. We should be able to keep our secret hidden. The biggest concern is discovery during post-op."

"Okay, we will be there in another two minutes," I said hanging up the phone, because he would need the time to scrub up. I turned to Xavier and noticed his thoughts: panic, blame, guilt, and worry.

"Xavier, Listen to me. In another minute we are going to be at the hospital. Carlisle and I are going to fix Noah and he will be fine. I need you to be strong and call Mom, okay?" I did not have time to explain to Esme what was going on, but she would need to come and pick Xavier up. Plus, she would want to be here when Noah comes out of surgery.

"How'd you? Where'd you come from?" he spluttered, confused over how I was saving the day when I was supposed to be at home.

"I was stopping at the store when I heard the screams. I need you to call Mom. Do you understand?"

He nodded and I could hear the jumble of his thoughts. He was clearly shocked and confused. I would have to explain more thoroughly later. But, for now, I had more important things to worry about.

The ambulance pulled up at the emergency entrance and the EMTs rolled Noah inside. I, however, headed to scrub up for surgery. By the time I entered the OR, Carlisle had already repaired the femoral artery. "You're just in time to help me with this bowel. You're sure it's not damaged?"

"I checked it thoroughly, but you should wash it. There was a lot of debris in the wound," I stated as Carlisle began his examination. After washing and disinfecting the injury, we sewed him up, and sent him to recovery.

"He should recover quickly," Carlisle said as we cleaned up. The rest of the conversation we held silently, so that the other humans would not hear. 'The intestines were not damaged, so the parasite host connection should be intact. It's a good thing that this happened so early on in the parasitism: later on the egg will be larger and the connection more easily damaged. The parasite should protect him from post-op infections and there should be no complications. I want to have him moved. I'd be more comfortable having him home, where no one can find out.'

I nodded in agreement as we went off to fill out paperwork. Esme and Bella were already here and would see to Xavier and Noah.

It was a week before Noah came home. I overheard suspicion in the thoughts of the other doctors when Carlisle suggested bringing the boy home for care, so it was critical that he be left in the hospital to recover, because we could not afford any suspicions or we risked another doctor examining Noah more closely. That could not be allowed, because they would likely want to see the X-rays, which Carlisle kept under lock and key.

As it turns out, Noah recovered rather quickly. Too quickly in fact. The vampiric fetus was clearly speeding the healing process of the human host. Carlisle and I personally changed all of his dressings so that no one would notice the speedy recovery. We also fudged our reports to reflect a slower, more human, rate of healing. It was a close call, but none of the humans discovered the parasitism, and we were safe.

A week later Noah was completely recovered, but still wrapped in bandages to hide this fact, as we brought him home. Esme had a huge welcome home party, with all the family present, except Nessie and Jacob of course. Nessie and Jacob did not even know that we had the new humans, so we could not tell them the good news.

We were all very happy the fetus and host were not permanently harmed and life went back to normal.


	14. Chapter 12

Edward's POV:

A few years later Noah and Xavier went off to University. Xavier had graduated one year before Noah, but we convinced him to take online courses for a year. That way Noah could finished up his senior year of high school and they could go off to University together, which would make it easier to keep an eye on both of the humans at the same time. And when the humans went off to University, Bella and I went with them. By this time Noah and Xavier were aware that we did not age and that we all frequently went back to University and pretended to be younger than we were. They thought that this was because we were aliens with a longer lifespan than humans.

We all regularly encouraged this misconception by pretending to talk about other planets and alien species when the humans did not know we were aware of their presence. The moment the humans would make their presence noticed, we would cut off our conversation abruptly, as if we did not want them to overhear. When they would question us on what we were talking about, we would tell an obvious lie. So neither Xavier nor Noah questioned Bella and my own enrollment in University with them.

Noah majored in english literature, while Xavier majored in ceramics. Neither Bella nor I wanted to take ceramics, but I decided to give it a go… I wished everyday for four years that Jasper and Alice would trade with Bella and myself. Ceramics was not even a real major! How was Xavier ever going to get a job playing with clay?

I could tell from Xavier's thoughts that he was more interested in partying than school work, so he had chosen the easiest major he could find. And since he was good at art and working with his hands, this meant ceramics. And as a vampire, my super speed and senses meant that I picked it up easily, but the lecture classes were just impossibly dull. I remember back when I was enrolled in high school, I would think that that was equivalent to sleeping. But if high school was the vampiric version of sleep, ceramics lectures were the vampiric version of a coma.

And after sitting through a lecture on large colorful excrement shaped clay blobs, I could understand why Xavier and the other art majors wanted to party. I could even see how they might want to blow their brains out on smack while doing so to get away from the tedium that was their lives. One look at a clay blob made me envious of humans and their ability to impair brain function with intoxicating substances.

But I could not let Xavier join them, not just for his own safety, but also because he was carrying my daughter. We did not know what the consequences of drug or alcohol abuse would be on the parasites and we did not want to find out. But if these substances damaged human fetuses, we assumed that they would be bad for vampiric ones as well. So Bella and myself were attempting to keep an extremely watchful eye on our humans in order to help them navigate the treacherous waters of University life without any experimentation in intoxicating or mind altering substances.

Bella's job was easier than my own, as we had agreed that she would watch Noah, while I would watch Xavier. Carlisle sitting the boys down once during junior high school and explaining that drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol rot your brain, cause cancer, and ruin your life was enough to convince Noah to stay away from them and concentrate on his school work. So all Bella had to do was make sure no other humans hurt him and that no accidents befell him.

Xavier had a radically different reaction to Carlisle's speech, in that his thoughts were still filled with the desire to smoke and drink. The only lesson he learned from that talk was that his father disapproved of smoking and drinking, and he would therefore have to sneak around behind his parents' backs. And as he got older, the desire to fit in with the kids that were doing these things increased.

Xavier was not particularly interested in drugs, but all of the cool kids at his high school smoked cigarettes and drank beer, and he wanted to be one of them. But back in high school, he knew that we would find out and punish him if he joined in. And although he was not yet aware of our special abilities, he did know that we had a knack for finding out things that he wanted to hide, as evidenced by that disastrous birthday in which Esme had invited all three of his girlfriends. So he never dared go against our wishes.

But now that he was an adult and in University, it was much harder to keep Xavier from smoking and drinking with his friends. He was now the legal age to smoke and he thought that it should be his choice. But he realized that I would never go for it, as he thought me his most uncool adopted sibling. So he was always trying to get away from me in order to chill with the guys or attend a wild party.

With my mind reading abilities, it was easy to discern when and how Xavier was planning on ditching me. The hard part was in keeping him from discovering that I was a mind-reader. There were only so many times that I could coincidently show up at the right time and place to foil his plans before he got suspicious.

So tonight when I found myself faced with Xavier's third attempt to sneak out this month, I decided to let him go. Of course I did not let him go alone and followed him just out of eye sight, but I let him think he was alone. My plan was to closely monitor the situation, and as soon as Xavier was about to smoke or drink, I would suddenly appear and stop him.

I would have to say that I had noticed his absence and went looking for him. And I just happened to find him in time, which would be a bit of a coincidence, but at least it would be a slightly different coincidence this time. So after watching Xavier park his car and enter the building, I climbed on top of the roof to wait. I could hear his voice and his thoughts, so I knew he was there and safe. And I watched through his own eyes for the opportune moment to make my appearance.

At first I was rather proud of Xavier, in that he turned down the beer he was offered upon arrival. "Sorry guys, I'm not twenty-one, and if I drink that, my prick of a brother'll know and be on my case," he explained trying to get through this party without violating our rules. "Plus, I drove."

But only half an hour later Xavier's buddies brought out the cigarettes and offered him one. 'I can't use the same excuse as I did for the beer, because I'm old enough to smoke. If I refuse then I'll be uncool and they'll kick me out of the group,' I heard Xavier think to himself before replying out loud. "Sure, you got a light?"

Before Xavier's buddy could reply, I was down, through the door, and approaching him at human speeds. "There you are Xavier! Bella and I have been looking all over for you!" I exclaimed as if I had just arrived and did not know what was going on. "Is that a cigarette in your hand? Dad is so going to disinherit you," I said providing the excuse Xavier should have used in the first place. Not wanting to be disinherited by his rich father was surely a good enough excuse to get him out of smoking one cigarette.

"Edward, you're embarrassing me in front of my friends. Can't you just go away and leave me alone for one night?" Xavier asked.

"Zavier, what's with the dork?" the young man, Russell, who had given Xavier the cigarette asked. Xavier's friends called him Zavier because four syllables were beyond their capabilities. At least they did not call him X.

"Russell, this is my annoying older brother Edward. Edward, this is my friend Russell," Xavier explained. "Now will you please go away?"

"No. Our father is a doctor and he is going to freak when I tell him that you have been smoking," I threatened while accentuating the correct excuse.

"Well if you tell Dad, then I'll tell Bella about you and the piano," he threatened back.

Emmett had let the piano incident slip in front of Noah and Xavier a few years back. They had both agreed at the time to keep the secret from my wife, but it was the only thing Xavier had on me. I could tell that he really did not want to tell Bella and hurt his sister, but he was desperate to get rid of me, so he would do it.

"Well I'm just gonna watch the game while you two sort this out," Russell excused himself.

"I told you that that was not my fault! Jasper set me up!" I tried to explain.

"How could Jasper have set you up? That doesn't even make sense," he countered.

Great: I was either going to have to admit that I was sexually attracted to a piano or reveal Jasper's power. Well I was already at the point of not being able to hide my own skill any further, and if I had to reveal mine, I might as well reveal Jasper's. And although I mostly wanted to do so in order to defend my honor against the piano claim, I could not help but think that I could use this to my advantage. Besides, the oldest two humans were told around this age and that worked out fine.

Not only would revealing our powers distract Xavier from smoking tonight, but also it would teach him a lesson. At the very least he would be afraid of violating my commands knowing that I could read minds. And if I played this just right, I could teach the boy some humility and put him in his place. Or better yet, Jasper could.

"I bet you ten grand that Jasper can do the same to you any time he wants," I laid the bait for my plan.

"You know I don't have my inheritance yet," he replied.

I knew that he did not have that kind of cash, because we would never trust him with that much at such a young age. Neither Xavier nor Noah had been given their inheritance, but a hundred thousand had been placed in a trust fund for each. We figured that since we would never die, and they would never inherit anything, we might as well give them the money while they were still alive. Esme had hoped that they would use the money wisely as a down payment to purchase a house after University or open up their own business.

Zakaira and Zikare had both used their inheritance wisely, and Noah probably would as well, but I could tell Xavier planned on wasting his the first chance he got. So I really did not feel bad about tricking him out of a tenth of it. And I would just give him the money back when he was older anyway, so I continued with my plan.

"Payable by transfer from your trust fund to my own," I offered.

"Deal. You'll never catch me making out with a piano," he agreed.

Just then my cell phone buzzed with a new text message from Alice, "Don't wake my humans when you come. Bring Noah as an impartial witness. Tell Bella you're taking them out to a bar to pick up chicks."

"Alice," I said holding out my cell phone for Xavier to read. I might as well let on about her power too. "You better go in the house and get Noah. Bella will never believe the picking up chicks line coming from me."

"How does Alice know?" he asked grabbing his jacket so that we could leave.

The phrase, 'Don't wake my humans,' kept floating around in his head as we walked back to his car. He had figured out that Alice was referring to Zikare and Zakaira, but we had never been so blatant about our non-humanness before.

"I texted her while you were not looking," I lied. Too much information at one time was not a good idea, and his head was still reeling over the human comment.

I drove Xavier's car back to our house while Xavier texted Noah to get ready. Moments later when I pulled up our drive, Noah was waiting outside. He jumped in the car and said, "Bella bought that we wanted to go to a club to look for pretty girls, but I didn't use the words chicks. That's offensive dude and I'm not gonna say that to my sister."

"Whatever. As long as she bought it, Noob," Xavier replied. He has called his brother Noob ever since he was a baby and could not pronounce Noah. Noah had trouble pronouncing Xavier as well, so he used to call him A-er, but had not done so in years.

"It's a two hour drive to Jasper and Alice's house. You two best take a nap in the car," I stated hopefully. It was already late, and I knew humans needed to sleep. And it would be a long drive, because Alice and Jasper worked at another University with their humans. We had considered enrolling in the same one, but their neighbors already knew us from our frequent visits, so we thought it was best to attend a different school.

"You're such the lamest brother ever," Xavier replied.

"Yeah, road trips're supposed to be filled with junk food, music, and road games," Noah added.

So the two boys stayed awake talking about good looking women, or "hot chicks," during the entire two hour drive. I kept trying to steer the conversation in a less derogatory direction, even mentioning how a woman ought to be treated with love and respect. But every time I brought up how I had courted Bella, they just groaned at how old fashioned I was, and kept bringing the subject back around to breasts and rear ends.

So I was rather grateful when two hours later I finally pulled up to Jasper and Alice's cottage in the woods. I had driven at my usual break neck pace, but still, driving was slower than running, and they lived really far.

Alice and Jasper's humans lived in neighboring cottages with their families, so we did not have to be too quiet. But just the same, I reminded the boys to keep it down as we pulled up. They were still a bit rowdy, despite the late hour, as we entered and greeted our deeply missed siblings.

Alice was also hyper, which was the norm for her, but I could not help feeling that she was using her excitement to cover something from me. I caught glimpses of a vision of her explaining to the boys that they would get sick if they drank or smoked, but she did not show me the whole thing or how she was going to pull it off.

Jasper's thoughts revealed that he thought Alice was up to something, but he did not really care what, as long as it provided entertainment for the night. They had been living away from our family for so long that he would go along with anything just to relieve the boredom.

"Jasper, please back me up here: Xavier thinks that I was caught red handed with my piano because I was sexually attracted to it. I have ten Gs down that you can do the same to him," I informed my brother.

"Alice already told me. Xavier, not only can I do the same to you, but the only reason I didn't go further with Edward, was that I wished to feign my non-involvement, because I had money riding on it," Jasper replied.

"We just pulled our old piano out from the garage," Alice explained leading the boys into the never before used dining room.

My old piano from about a hundred years back sat where a table should. We had lived only thirty minutes from here a hundred years ago, and instead of bringing all of our stuff with us each move, we tended to leave the furniture. We would buy new furniture for the new place, and if ever we moved back into the area, we would revisit our old house and retrieve some of our freshly antiqued belongings. Sometimes we even moved back into the same house, but only if everyone we had ever met while living in the town had died.

"So just sit down at the piano and we can get started," Jasper stated following us into the dining room.

"Sure. But I have to warn you: I like girls, not musical instruments," Xavier replied with smugness that Jasper thought thick, tangible, and palpable, as Xavier sat down on the piano bench.

"Noah, Edward, and Alice, you should all stand back so that I don't hit you full force," Jasper warned. "My power's more potent and easier to direct when touching, and less likely to spill over onto others, but I don't want to touch your boy, so this'll have to do. Ready, Xavier?"

"Ready, give it your best shot, brother," he replied. Even though Jasper, Alice, and their humans had not lived with us during the past twenty years, both humans knew that all four were also Esme and Carlisle's adopted children. And they often came by for visits and family reunions, so it was not unusual for Xavier to refer to Jasper as his brother.

Xavier did not even last a minute before he had to admit defeat to Jasper's power. Alice handed him a change of clothing and directed him to the bathroom to clean up. It was only then that Alice revealed her vision of the night to me. In it we finally revealed to Noah and Xavier that we had a mind-reader, a psychic, and an empath in the family. And after that she would explain that we had cured them with our alien healing cells and that drinking, smoking, and drug use would damage the cells and return them to their previous diseased state. And Alice had instructed me to bring Noah so that we could tell them both at once.

Zakaira and Zikare had been about Noah and Xavier's age when we first told them about our powers and we still had not told them about the healing. But Zikare and Zakaira were highly intelligent and already suspected our powers before we told them. Noah was still years away from figuring it out on his own, so this was a talk I had hoped to put off as long as possible. But with Xavier's ever more frequent attempts to sneak out, it would only be a matter of time before he found out. And if Xavier knew, he would tell Noah.

'It's the only way Edward,' Alice began. 'Xavier will keep pushing you until you tell him. This way he has a sense of appreciation for exactly how strong our powers are and will stop trying to test our limits. You can't watch him every moment of every day forever. Eventually he'll find a way to sneak out and drink and smoke. But once he knows, he won't even try it.'

"But what if they figure it out?" I asked quietly so that Noah would not hear.

'Zikare and Zakaira haven't figured out that we're vampires. Our powers just recemented our alienness in their minds,' she reminded me.

I nodded and a moment later when Xavier came out of the bathroom thinking, 'Man that was embarrassing, but how did Jasper do it?' I decided to answer his unspoken question.

"Jasper is an empath. He can make anyone, human or other, feel however he wants whenever he wants. We should all be grateful to him for not doing so more often," I explained.

"Wow!" Noah exclaimed. Until then he had been so confused over what had just transpired that he was speechless with his thoughts just a jumbled mess of confusion. Now I could tell he was impressed.

'Well it's a good thing he's never lived with us,' Xavier thought, not realizing that I had answered his thought.

"Xavier, just because Jasper has never lived with us does not mean that you are immune to Alice's talents," I replied to another unspoken thought.

"What talent does Alice have?" Noah managed to ask, but barely: he was still in mild shock over finding out about Jasper.

"I never texted Alice anything tonight," I stated, hoping that once this knowledge sunk in, Xavier would put two and two together. But just in case, I tossed Noah my cell with Alice's text displayed on the screen, so that he would also have a chance of figuring out what I was getting at.

"Then how did Alice know we were coming?" Xavier asked.

"Same way I know that you're planning on asking Stacy McMillan out to the movies next week," Alice joined in my game.

"Same way she knew where to meet me on the day that we met, even though I didn't know myself that I was going there," Jasper added in.

'Psychic,' Noah thought.

"You guessed it Noah!" I exclaimed.

"Guessed what? He didn't even say anything," Xavier replied.

"She's really a psychic?" Noah asked me.

"Yes," I replied.

"And how'd you know what I was thinking?" Noah asked another.

"You read minds?" Xavier asked incredulously.

"Yes," I replied. "Many of our kind have special powers."

"And Edward's down right annoying too," Jasper added.

"Tell me about it. I have to watch everything I think just so Nosey over here doesn't over hear," Alice joined him.

'I don't believe this,' Xavier thought.

"Then try me: think something that there is no way I could possibly know," I countered.

'If Alice is a psychic, she probably already told him what I'm gonna think,' Xavier thought.

"No: Alice did not tell me. She only sent me the one text message, and that is all of the communication I have had with her all night," I replied.

"Is it just me, or is ii really annoying listening to only half of the conversation?" Noah asked.

"It's not you, it's Edward. He's the biggest pain out of all of us and can't be bothered to talk normally for the rest of us. That's one of the reasons we like to keep you humans in the dark: it makes Edward stop all the half spoken conversations," Jasper replied.

"At least I never _made_ you _think_ something," I retorted, as I was still holding a grudge over the whole piano thing.

"Fair enough, but you deserved it for being you," he replied sending me compassion and understanding and thinking about how I should be grateful that he did not influence my emotions more often.

"Stop it!" I exclaimed shaking the compassion off, but the understanding was sinking in.

"The humans are going to crash soon," Alice warned coming out of a vision showing two very sleepy humans. "It's almost morning, so we need to get on with our explanations." 'Or more accurately, our lies.'

'Well if Edward really is a mind-reader, then he'll know about my plans to sneak out Wednesday night,' Xavier thought, still trying to think of something that no one besides him could possibly know.

"Xavier, when you sneak out Wednesday night I am just going to follow you," I warned.

"Fine you really are a mind-reader, but you're really making my head hurt," Xavier conceded.

"Well sit down and Jasper'll fix that," Alice offered.

The boys sat, and while Jasper calmed them, I went to their kitchen and made the humans tea. I could tell from Jasper's thoughts that they kept the tea there for when their own humans came over to visit. They even had a few granola bars in case they got hungry. I returned from the kitchen with the tea and set down a mug in front of each boy. They did not particularly like tea, but it was all we had, so they took it.

"Xavier and Noah, you're both aware that you were dying when we adopted you, aren't you?" Alice began as she had in her vision. Both boys nodded, so she continued. "And you have also noticed that neither yourselves nor our kind ever get sick?"

"Yes," Noah answered taking a sip of his tea.

"Our kind can't suffer from human diseases and our father Carlisle likes to experiment. He had an idea to cure humans by figuring out what it was about us that made us immune. The first few times did not work so well, but eventually he isolated a type of white blood cell that we carry that protects us from human diseases.

"But we each only produce small quantities of it, so Carlisle was only able to harvest from adults of our kind. And it takes a hundred years for each of us to replenish the lost cells to the extent that we can be harvested again. The first time a harvest successfully resulted in a cured human was with me and Jasper. Zikare and Zakaira were dying of AIDs, but now they're cured.

"The next couple to come of age after us was Bella and Edward. Bella's immune cells were harvested and injected into you, Noah, curing your Menkes disease. Xavier, Edward's cells were implanted into you, curing your leukemia. After that, Carlisle and Esme's reached a hundred years since their last harvesting, so they were reharvested, curing Taraji and Tahira.

"But just because we saved you doesn't make you immortal or immune to death. If you've noticed, none of us does drugs, smokes, or drinks: these things are toxic to our systems. Our cells will die, just as our bodies will, if we violate this rule. If either of you were to use these substances, our immune cells which are still living in your bodies, will die. If those cells die, your leukemia Xavier, and your Menkes Noah, will return and kill you.

"I highly suggest that you make our cells last as long as possible, because we don't have more to give you. The next couple due to be harvested is Emmett and Rosalie, and they're really looking forward to having baby humans and won't want to give that dream up just because either of you screwed up.

"So do you two understand why it is that we can't allow you to drink or smoke, ever?" Alice asked.

"Yes," Noah answered. I could tell from his thoughts that he bought this lie, would not drink or smoke, and was grateful that we had saved him with our special alien cells.

"I guess," Xavier answered. His thoughts revealed that he was still skeptical of what we were telling him, but he was now so scared of his leukemia returning that he would never drink or smoke.

"Good," Alice replied. 'They're gonna pass out from exhaustion soon. You best get them home.'

I decided to heed Alice's warning and usher the humans back to their own beds. "Well, let's go home. You two can sleep in the car while I drive back," I said pulling a yawning Noah up off of the couch.

"Oh, and when you get there, you'll have to tell Bella that the clubbing was just a ruse to get both humans in the car for a road trip to come visit us. And you'll have to reveal that we told about our powers and the white blood cells," Alice instructed me. 'I see both humans keeping the secret about the piano. Xavier doesn't say anything because he's too embarrassed over his own piano debacle, and he'll force Noah to keep quiet too.'

"Thanks, Alice. I don't know what I would do without you," I replied before our customary parting hug.

I piled my humans back in the car and drove them back home. Once they were both asleep and drooling, I put on my blue tooth and called Esme. I told her to remove ten thousand from Xavier's trust fund due to a lost bet. She chastised me for an hour about making bets with the humans and that being a big brother meant leading by example. But in the end she agreed to remove the money from his fund for twenty years. But after that, she would give it back to him.

And Alice was correct both in that the humans would keep their mouths shut regarding the piano, and that Bella would buy the new excuse that I had taken the humans to reveal the truth and tell a lie to them. And most importantly, Alice had been right in regards to the truth and that lie being exactly what Xavier needed to keep him in line.

From then on I no longer had problems with Xavier trying to sneak out twice a week. And when he did think about it, I would nip it in the bud by revealing that I knew. There was no point attempting to sneak out when the person you were trying to get away from already knew of the plan. So all in all, my job human-sitting quickly became a lot easier.


	15. Chapter 13

Edward's POV:

We still saw Alice, Jasper, Zikare, and Zakaira frequently, even though they were a two hours' drive away. Zikare and Zakaira were happy their parents had saved Noah and Xavier as well as Tahira and Taraji. I still cannot figure out how Alice and Jasper lucked out with those two, while Bella and I got Noah and Tweedle-dum.

Alice and Jasper had sat the twins down and explained the truth about how they had been cured of AIDs. Not the lie that we had told Xavier and Noah, but as close to the truth as we could get without saying the word vampire. They now knew that being infected by our parasitic offspring had saved them.

And instead of mentioning the word "vampire," Jasper and Alice slipped in the words "anal probe" and "alien implantation," thus keeping with the current misconception among our hosts. They also explained that the parasites Zakaira was carrying had provided the knowledge to cure aging. The twins were upset to learn that they would not live past one hundred, no matter how far the anti-aging research progressed. But, they were grateful to have been given a chance at life and to have been a part of shifting scientific paradigms.

All in all, the twins took it better than I had expected. Being born in sub-Saharan Africa with AIDs still has a very poor prognosis, despite the fact that the AIDs cure had been perfected fifty years ago. The problem was one of mass production and distribution, as there were over five hundred million people infected with the disease on that continent. And although the cure still had not trickled down to the epicenter of the disease, AIDs had been eradicated from western society.

But even in western society, the cure had not been available in time to save the twins, as humans were dying of AIDs all of the time back when we announced their deaths to Nessie and our extended family. So when the girls were younger, neither of them ever expected to make it to the ripe old age of eighty. And now that they had, they agreed that carrying a parasite was a small price to pay for their cure. They were content to continue their research for the next twenty years as if nothing had changed, and their lives went on.

While the lives of Jasper and Alice's humans moved on, so too did those of my own. I did not have any more problems with Noah and Xavier for the rest of their undergraduate careers. After four years, Xavier and Noah graduated University with degrees in their chosen fields and I finally got an answer to my question of how Xavier was going to get a job with a degree in ceramics. Turns out he did not plan on getting a job, ever, because he had rich adopted parents. After University, he decided he wanted to see the world before getting a job. And he planned on using his trust fund to do so.

I could see from his thoughts that he thought Carlisle and Esme were rich enough to support him while he lived the lifestyle of the stupendously rich, even after his trust fund runs out. Carlisle put an end to that notion and said that we were free to take him to Antarctica and hunt penguins for the next eighty years if we so choose. They told their son that he would not get an inheritance just to sit around and party and his trust fund was temporally revoked until he could think of a better thing to do with the money.

In the end, Noah settled in a town near Carlisle and Esme and became a writer. He used his trust fund money for a down payment on a house and to live off of until his books started to sell. When he finished his first book, Alice managed to find a publisher and made sure it was accepted. And since we still needed to keep an eye on his safety, Bella, Xavier, and I all moved in next door. Xavier got a job selling insurance, while I went back to work at the hospital with Carlisle, and Bella went back to the biotech company.

And with University and the labor intensive adolescence period over, more time was freed up for travel, so Bella and I visited Nessie in the Amazon every chance we got, leaving Noah and Xavier with Rosalie and Emmett. They always kept such good watch over the humans that we were confident that they were safe in our absence.

On one such trip, we were sitting around the campfire in the evening with our friends after a day of gorging ourselves. I even caught a jaguar, which was delicious. The Amazonians decided that Bella and I needed time alone with Nessie to catch up, so only Zafrina and Jacob's pack were currently entertaining us.

Jacob's pack and their mates stayed because they considered themselves more closely allied to my own coven than they did the Amazonian Coven. And their mates also wanted to catch up with us and hear the stories of what Carlisle's Coven was up to these days, sans pet humans of course. We had not bothered to inform them of the adoption of the latest four humans.

And Zafrina stayed because she and Nessie had perfected the art of using their gifts in tandem to tell stories. Nessie and Zafrina had just finished the retelling of everything we had missed since our last visit, when Nessie announced, "Okay, Mom, now it's your turn to tell us a story."

"Which one do you want to hear?" Bella asked.

"When you went to school the first time, what was the strangest thing, to a human, that the Cullen kids ever said or did during school?" Nessie asked. I was grateful that she had not asked me, because with my insight into the minds of those around me, I always felt like I was invading their privacy by telling stories about the others.

"Well, they did a lot of strange things, like not eating or drinking. It was fairly obvious to me that they weren't human and I figured it out right away. But, I remember one incident when everyone else also noticed how strange the Cullens were. Alice was in my senior year English class, along with your dad. And one day the teacher, Mr. Berty, gave us the assignment to write about an event from our childhood, what being a child was like, and how it has shaped you.

"Well, Alice raised her hand, and said, 'I have amnesia. I have no childhood memories and no idea what being a child is like. Can I have another assignment, please?' And she used her dazzling eyes at Mr. Berty, so he was like, 'Um… what?'

"It was so funny, that I burst out laughing. Then Edward joined in, and the whole class followed. After the class settled back down, Mr. Berty began to question Alice's statement. 'Well, how far back can you remember? What's your first memory?'

"Of course Alice couldn't answer this truthfully. She couldn't admit waking up a vampire in the middle of the forest sixty years previously and having a psychic vision. So, instead she answered, 'A few years ago I woke up in a forest and saw Jasper's face leaning over me in concern.'

"Mr. Berty replied, 'Okay, write about that.' The assignment Alice turned in was the best, so it was read out loud in class. Truthfully, I think Mr. Berty just wanted everyone to hear the latest Cullen gossip. Alice had done her best to make the story more human, leaving out the blood lust and psychic visions, but had included little bits of the truth. I had thought Alice would write something like: Jasper found her in the forest with amnesia, brought her back home to the Cullens, who took her to the hospital and adopted her. Something believable for a human, right?

"But, no. Alice may have included Jasper finding her in the forest with amnesia, but then she wrote that Jasper made her a fake ID, took her to Vegas, and she won big at roulette. They used the money to stay in a five-star hotel for half a year until Jasper finally decided to take her to meet his family. And only then was she adopted.

"After that story, everyone wanted to ask Jasper to make them fake IDs. But, they were all too afraid of him to ask. Plus, they thought the Cullens were weird _before_ Alice's story and that story just confirmed it. The fact the Jasper had taken Alice gambling in Vegas was talk of the school for the rest of the year," Bella finished.

"Dad, why didn't you tell Auntie Alice to write a more normal story?" Nessie asked.

"Well, it was spring semester of senior year and school was almost over. We knew that we would have to leave town after that year, because we were planning on changing your mom. Well, at least that is what we were planning before you came along. And since we were not planning on sticking around much longer, it did not matter what the humans thought of us.

"And your mom and I were already the talk of the school after we came back from Italy. The humans never did understand why our family moved away only to move back six months later. And it was nice to have some of the attention diverted away from myself, even if it was transferred to my sister, which was Alice's intention in the first place."

"Okay. But, Mom, please tell me you at least wrote a normal story for that class," Nessie begged.

"I did. I wrote about the time when I was three and cracked my chin open at the pool," Bella replied. My Bella was always a very clumsy human.

"So you slipped and fell when running at the pool. But how did that shape you?" Jacob asked.

"I was not running! I was in the pool, clinging onto the side, when my mother asked me a question. I used the ledge to pull myself up to respond. My fingers slipped and I fell. But instead of falling into the pool, my chin broke my fall on the concrete ledge. I cracked it open and started bleeding everywhere.

"And it was that day that I learned that I fainted at the smell of blood: I smelled the blood, fainted, and fell in the pool. My mom had to jump in and rescue me, but I had stopped breathing by the time she reached me, so she had to give me CPR. I had to go to the emergency room and get stitches and everything. It was all so traumatizing, that the experience shaped who I was as a person," Bella finished summing up her own essay.

"Are you sure that is how it shaped you? I seem to remember you sneezing with your head out of the car window and cracking your chin open on the window glass. The pool incident probably shaped you by making you prone to cracking your chin open," Jacob teased.

"When did that happen? And why was I not informed?" I asked incredulously as this was the first time I was hearing about this. If she had gotten hurt as a human while Jacob was supposed to be watching her, he would have to answer for it, even if it had happened over a hundred years ago. This was the person I was trusting with my first born, after all.

"Relax, Edward. It was while you were gone, and I forgot about it, or I would've told you when you came back. I suffered a myriad of injuries without my knight in shining armor to protect me," Bella explained.

"Oh," I cringed. I still had not forgiven myself for leaving Bella to fend for herself. Not only was she left with werewolves and carnivorous vampires knocking down her door, but she also faced a much more serious threat on a daily basis: her own bad luck and clumsiness.

"Well that story was not so bad. Dad, what'd you and the rest of the family write about?" Nessie asked.

"Well I wrote about getting my first piano at the age of six, because I could not remember anything else that would sound normal. I could not very well write about my biological parents dying of the Spanish flu in nineteen eighteen, could I? I had to find something that I had done, remembered, and that modern children were still doing," I explained.

"What about Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper?" Seth asked. "What did they write about?"

I disliked answering this type of question without the subjects of the inquiry present, but I was the only one present who could answer, and these stories were not that personal, so I decided to answer. "Well, they were not in the same year as us, but the year before, Mr. Berty had given the same assignment. Rosalie had written about when her brother's train had broken, and she had taken it apart and fixed it for him. That led her to discover her love of all things mechanical," I began.

"So Rosalie fixed Jasper's train?" Embry asked.

"Well that is what she wrote, because he was her supposed brother at the time. But in reality it had been her biological human brother with the train," I explained.

"Well, I think that's a very cute story about the train," Zafrina put in.

"And Emmett wrote about the first time he went hunting with his father, as hunting did not change much over the years," I continued, debating how much of the next story I should tell. "But, Jasper had a much harder time fudging an event from his past to seem normal. Not only had he forgotten most of it, but he had grown up in the eighteen hundreds when slavery was still legal, and he was also trying to keep with the story that he was Rosalie's twin."

"Rosalie had grown up in New York, while Jasper was from Texas, and they had agreed to use Rosalie's cover story. But Jasper wanted to write about the time he walked in on his father cheating on his mother with one of the slaves, and the light-skinned child she had produced as a result," I started knowing that Bella, Nessie, and the Quileutes already knew this part, so there would be no danger in repeating it.

"Jasper kept his father's secret, but was so troubled by the fact that his own sister had to work as a slave, that he jumped at the first chance he could to get out of that house. The first chance happened to be joining the confederate army. And although Jasper did not agree with slavery, he realized that his mother and sisters would be harmed if the Union army was just allowed to march across their land," this was actually one of Jasper's least violent stories, so he often fell back on it when ask for one from his past, because he was much more reluctant to tell of his time with Maria.

"Jasper joined up with the goal of protecting the innocent from the horrors of the war, but did his best to avoid actual battle. So I am sure that you can see how this story shaped him, but he could not very well tell it as it was and maintain that he was Rosalie's brother and not a vampire. Instead he wrote that his father had had an affair with the maid and gotten her pregnant, but denied the kid. And he hadn't seen his half-sister since his parent's car accident. Jasper dropped the whole part about the war, but mentioned how he thought that it was wrong that minorities in our country were still forced to wait on the rich white folks just because of money," I finished.

"Okay, Edward, your turn. What is the most non-human thing you ever got caught doing in school?" Jacob asked, continuing the story telling.

"Definitely saving Bella from that car crash. She never let that incident go."

"Besides the car crash. We've _all_ heard the car crash story a million times," Embry replied with his wife's head in his lap. I could tell that she was sleepy and would fall asleep long before our stories would end this night.

"Once Emmett hit me with vampiric strength when we were in the school parking lot," I supplied as an alternative to the car crash story. Telling my own stories was something I was much more comfortable with.

"What happened? I mean, you can read his mind. Why didn't you duck?" Jacob asked.

"Well, this was the first time Bella was repeating high school, and she was shielding Emmett from me. My attention was on my lovely wife, and then Emmett came out of nowhere and sucker punched me right in the stomach. For no reason, other than he finally could now that we had Bella."

"So what did the humans see?" Nahuel wondered from Leah's side. Leah had taken the longest to open up to the vampires, but with a hybrid for a mate, she had no choice. And she did eventually grow used to the situation, although she still tended to be quiet around us.

"Emmett hit me hard and I had not braced myself, so I flew back about twenty feet. I had just hunted that morning and the force of the blow forced me to vomit up my meal. At least ten humans saw me fly twenty feet through the air and retch up blood."

"How'd you explain that?" Seth asked between fits of laughter so strong that they jostled his wife, Jennifer, whom he was now holding in his arms. They were a very affectionate couple and she had been holding his hand and gently kissing it the entire night.

"I couldn't just get up and say I was fine, could I? Everyone thought I was seriously injured after that. So Jasper came over, picked me up, and put me back in our car, while I pretended to be seriously injured. Then Alice announced that they were driving me to the hospital. I stayed home from school for a few weeks and Bella claimed that I was bleeding internally and had had surgery. All of the humans kept an extra wide breadth between themselves and Emmett after that."

"That reminds me, your stories always involve Uncle Emmett, or Uncle Jasper, or Aunt Alice, but never Aunt Rosalie. Tell me one about Aunt Rose," Nessie requested.

"Well," I began as I was the only one present who knew what Rosalie was like as a newborn, and it took me a moment to decide on which story to tell. "Rosalie did not attend high school for the first time until after she and Emmett had been married for ten years. This was because he was changed only two years after her, so she had not completed the newborn years and gained her self-control before they embarked on their epic ten year long honeymoon, in which they only came up for air long enough to drink.

"So, by the time the honeymoon phase had calmed down, it was already nineteen forty-five, and nearing the end of World War II. We all moved to a new town, and Esme went to work helping the war effort, by taking up a job at a tank manufacturing facility. We actually had to move this time because Esme had had an accident helping the war effort in our last town. She felt horrible and it was not even her fault, because a factory accident had spilt a large quantity of blood in front of her. But still, three women were dead, and we had to move.

"Carlisle got a job at the local hospital, and signed us three kids up for high school. Rosalie and Emmett made an effort not to fornicate during school, but they were still rather obvious about the public displays of affection. Back in the forties, with the war going strong, the humans were extremely conservative and did not think it was proper that Rosalie and Emmett were an item and living together as adopted siblings," I continued. This story was a bit personal, but Rosalie had just told it to the humans last year, so I did not feel too bad repeating it.

"By the end of her first day of high school, Carlisle and Esme got a call home complaining about her romantic relationship with her brother. Carlisle tried to smooth it over and claimed the two were only dating and not sexually involved, but Emmett and Rosalie still got a lecture from the principal about unwanted teenaged pregnancies. Emmett tried to grin and bear it, but the one thing Rosalie wanted more than anything in the world was a pregnancy," I said.

Rosalie had gone almost two hundred years without telling this story once, because the pregnancy issue was so personal. But now that the disgorgement of her own eggs was on the horizon, and babies were not just a possibility, but a quickly approaching reality, Rosalie's emotional scars had begun to heal. And because these memories no longer hurt, she had finally decided to start talking about it.

"And since that was the one thing she could never have, and she was being lectured on how horrible it would be, she lost it. She broke the wooden arm rest of the chair she was sitting in trying to keep still and quiet, holding her tongue like a good forties' girl. But when the wood snapped, she snapped and let the principal have a taste of her mind.

"Rosalie was trying to play a sixteen year old girl, but she came across as anything but when she lectured that principal on exactly how much she wished Emmett _could_ get her pregnant. Then she stormed off, and Emmett followed her, trying to calm her down, while I entered the principal's office to try to smooth things over. I tried to explain that Rosalie had been abused and was consequently incapable of bearing children, resulting in her over reaction. But too much damage had already been done, so Carlisle decided that it was best to pull up our roots and start again somewhere else.

"We actually had to move again not long after getting to the next town, because Emmett met his first singer. We had had to move both when Rosalie was added to the family, and when Emmett was added. In addition, after adding Emmett, was the move to Hoquiam, which we had to leave thanks to the wolves. So, we had quite a string of moves in a row," I finished, knowing that this string of moves was a large part of why Rosalie hated to move.

"What about you Zafrina? Do you have any stories of narrowly avoiding detection by the humans?" Jacob asked, trying to include our friend in the tales.

"No young one. Our coven has never had much interaction with the humans, apart from meal time that is. And whenever we've been caught off guard, we've always managed to clean up by Volturi standards," Zafrina explained, trying to gently convey the message that there were no survivors. And everyone present understood that she spoke for the three other hybrids as well, so they too were excused from the story telling.

"Okay, Jake. Your turn," Nessie stated, ready for the next story, and eager to return to a less morbid topic. "What's the most vampiric thing the Cullens ever did in front of you when humans were present?"

"Sure, Sure. Does Bella count as human?" Jacob asked.

"No. No one who already knew about vampires or shape-shifters counts."

"Okay, let me think a minute," Jacob started. "How about the time Jasper broke my hand?"

"Oh, I remember that one. Okay, tell us," Nessie replied.

"Well, we were all having a family picnic in Forks. This was about a year after Bella and Edward were married. And you were about one year old, Nessie. But of course you looked to be about seven," he began reminiscing on how adorable Nessie had been as a child.

"Well, anyway, my pack and I were joining the Cullens at the park for a picnic. The Cullens couldn't eat, but we wolves ate enough for everyone. We were playing poker, sitting on the grass, enjoying the nice cloudy day and the Cullens were cheating of course."

"We were _not_," I insisted. "Bella was shielding everyone from me, and you know it!"

"True that. True that. But, Bella was not shielding anyone from Alice or Jasper."

"Jasper's ability hardly counts as cheating in poker. It took Emmett only half an hour to learn how to bluff his emotions," I maintained.

"But what about Alice's visions?"

"She's _blind_ around the wolves," I countered.

"Well, blind or not, she was having a vision, and I knew it."

"She wasn't having a vision of the game!" I hissed through my teeth. "Jasper had decided he wanted to go hunting that night. All she saw were deer."

"Well, I'm not a mind-reader, so I didn't know. Anyway, back to my story. I thought Alice was using her vision to cheat. And since I was sitting right next to her, I reached out and put my arm on her shoulder and tried to accuse her of cheating.

"Jasper very gently removed my hand for me. By gently, I mean he didn't sever it from my body completely, rip out my throat, or drink my blood. I was feeling quite grateful for the compassion he showed me." At this point everyone started laughing. I remembered that at the time, Jasper was actually manipulating Jacob's emotions to make him feel grateful.

"Well the whole thing was my own fault, really. Jasper warned me, back at Bella's high school graduation party, that I was _not_ to touch his wife. I should've remembered the warning," Jacob said this with minimal sarcasm.

"Do you know how hard it was for him to leave all of your limbs attached the first time?" I asked. "He was planning on going back and finishing the job for months afterwards. And, just when killing you for touching Alice finally moved out of his top three to-do list, what did you do? You went and touched her again. You must be the luckiest wolf alive to touch Alice twice, and live."

"Sure. Sure. So, there were several human families nearby, including Mike Newton and Jessica Stanley, home from University for the summer. They both saw what happened. They both heard the loud crack of the bones as they broke. They saw that Jasper barely touched me and yet my broken wrist bones were jutting out from my skin at odd angles and I was bleeding profusely.

"Carlisle quickly set the bones back into place, so they would heal correctly. Then he wrapped my wrist in a towel, to hide the speed of the healing; it had already stopped bleeding. My pack and I had to make a quick exit, claiming the need for a trip to the emergency room."

"When you left, Mike and Jessica came over and wanted to know what happened," I chuckled. "Jasper simply replied, 'Black was hitting on my wife.' And he manipulated Mike's emotions so that Mike would be terrified of him. I could tell from Mike's thoughts that he almost soiled his pants." Everyone awake shared my amusement.

"Okay, Seth, your turn. Most non-human story when humans were present," Nessie ordered.

"Well, that'd probably be back in high school before you were born," Seth began and his wife, Jennifer, shifted into his side to snuggle. "I was in ninth grade and Collin and Brady were in eighth. We had all just turned and were still having difficulty controlling our anger. Paul, Jared, Embry, and Quil still went to school with us, but the older kids had a different lunch period, and Jacob had run away.

"So the three of us were hanging out at lunch time, in our usual spot outside by the forest. There were several other Quileute kids nearby. That's when Collin said something about Brady's mother. Brady attacked Collin, practically biting his arm off. Luckily, neither of them shifted, otherwise the humans would've really freaked.

"Collin was fine, but he started to heal right there in front of all the humans. We didn't have anything to cover it with, so I quickly pulled off my shirt and wrapped up his arm. Then the teachers came over wanting to know what was going on.

"We got sent to the principal's office and Collin to the nurse's office. But by the time we got there Collin was completely healed. He had also ditched the blood covered shirt, after wiping the blood off of his arm. So I insisted that Brady hadn't nearly ripped Collin's arm off and that the other kids were exaggerating. I didn't have an explanation for what happened to my shirt though…

"Brady came through for me and said he had torn my shirt when we were fighting. We all got detention and I had to wear my P.E. shirt the rest of the day," Seth finished his story. "Leah, you go next."

"Well our house was right next to Collin's house, who was only twelve and a half when I first phased. It was before Collin changed himself, so he had no idea that the stories were true, and was still human. And I had no more than average control for a young wolf," Leah said holding Nahuel's hand.

"I didn't shift for the first time until my senior year of high school, but I was already nineteen by then, and I was having a very bad year. I was still getting over a tough break up, my dad had just had a heart attack from watching me phase, and the forest was swarming with vampires practically breathing down my neck. That combined with the fact that I was the first female wolf ever recorded and was faced with being menopausal before I'd even reached my twentieth birthday, all made for one very out of control young wolf.

"And I had to pass Collin's house to get to the forest from my house, so there were a number of instances in which Collin saw more than he should have. Several times he caught me leaving my house in wolf form after exploding out of my skin. I'd be so mad and angry that I couldn't transform back, so I'd go out into the woods for a run. Collin was always rather shocked to see a giant wolf coming and going from my house, but he never realized it was me.

"And when I'd return, finally calm enough to have phased back, I wouldn't have any clothes. I used to keep piles of spare clothes out in the woods for when this happened. And Seth, my most awesome brother, would leave clothes out for me as well. But a few times he wasn't around and I'd already used the spare clothes and forgotten to leave out a new set.

"So one day Collin, who was barely thirteen at the time, caught me sneaking back into my house naked. After I covered up, I went back out to explain to him, but he thought that I'd had sex in the woods and lost my clothes in the process. I tried to deny it until I realized that this explanation was simpler, then I just went with it. So I made him promise not to tell my mom or brother that I was having sex in the woods.

"But it was only a month later that Victoria's presence in the area forced Collin to phase as well. And once he was one of us, he finally understood why he'd been seeing the giant wolves leaving our house so often. And I was finally able to admit that I hadn't been having wild sex in the trees.

"Well, that's the end of my story. That just leaves you, Embry," Leah announced.

"No, Nessie hasn't gone either," Embry replied.

"Nessie has no interesting stories to tell, because she's always fit in with the humans," Jacob supplied, sticking up for his wife.

"That's not true: she stuck out plenty on the Rez," Leah countered.

"Yes, but apart from her pale skin and immortality, the humans never suspected a thing," Seth added taking Jacob's side.

"Whatever you say little bro," Leah conceded, ending the argument. "Go ahead, Embry."

"Okay, so my mom didn't know about the wolves and I never had a dad, leaving me a lone wolf trying to hide it from my only parental figure. I had to run the perimeter at night, but my mom wouldn't let me go. She was always grounding me, so I'd have to sneak out, and then she'd ground me again when she caught me sneaking back in," Embry told us, Maysun still sleeping in his lap.

"The year of the Volturi showdown there were just so many vampires around that all of our tempers were running high and my mom just wouldn't stop. One morning I came back from running the perimeter all night and just snapped when she started yelling at me. I totally lost it and phased right there in front of her.

"My half-brother, Sam, had to come over and explain that I'd inherited the wolf gene from our father. She practically had a heart attack over the whole thing, and Sam ended up calling the council members to come and explain everything to her. But after that, she stopped grounding me for doing my job and protecting the tribe, so it all worked out for the best," he said, stroking Maysun's silky dark brown hair.

Embry had actually not known who his father and half-brother were at the time of this story. It was not until his mother was confronted with her shifting son that she admitted that she had had an affair with Joshua Uley. And only then did Embry learn that Joshua Uley was his father and that Sam Uley was his half-brother.

"Well it's late, so let's call it a night," Jacob announced.


	16. Chapter 14

Edward's POV:

When Tahira and Taraji were thirteen and fourteen, Carlisle and I went looking for dying children again. Carlisle had decided it was best to alternate from whence we acquired the sick children and AIDs babies were out since the cure for AIDs was finally in the pipeline for mass production and distribution throughout sub-Saharan Africa. We could not in good conscience take another AIDs baby if there was a chance they would be cured within their lifetime.

So instead of traveling to Africa looking for AIDs babies, we went to Russia to find children dying of tuberculosis. TB should have been eliminated years ago; it would have, had the humans used their antibiotics properly. But TB was resistant to most antibiotics, and quickly evolved multiple drug resistance to the rest, and has been spreading ever since. It was worst in Russia, but was spreading south to China, and west to Eastern Europe.

Instead of working on cures for the disease, western science created a more sophisticated diagnostic test, which allowed the infected to be quarantined to the northeastern quadrant of the globe. TB was now a death sentence again, and the quarantine kept this death sentence from infecting the rest of the human population.

It was sad and heart breaking to watch as half of the human population turned their backs on the other half, but the Chinese scientists, once faced with the disease, pooled all of their resources to develop a vaccine. They were dozens of years off, but Alice managed to slip them a few hints to speed their progress along, so it was not hopeless. But once the vaccine was available, it would not cure those already infected. The billion people worldwide with the disease would be left to die, abandoned in the hopes that the next generation would not suffer so and all because it was not economically feasible to save them. There was not much we could do, but we could smuggle two TB babies out and give them a life in the United States.

TB was infectious, but the other humans would be safe if we took proper precautions. Once a citizen in the U.S. had the disease, they could not be forced to leave and instead would be given the latest useless antibiotics and medical care. Smuggling the babies into the country would be easy compared to covering up the missing dying babies once they were cured, but Carlisle and I were convinced that we would be able to forge death certificates sufficiently to satisfy the CDC.

With that in mind, Carlisle and I traveled to Russia. I went with Carlisle instead of Esme for two reasons: one, Esme wanted to stay home with Tahira and Taraji. And two, Carlisle wanted my medical opinion on how sick the children were, because we needed children who could survive for a year. We would have access to all the latest TB treatments, but we might as well be stuck in the middle ages for all the good that did us.

We also needed children who were definitely dying. If there was a chance of recovery we should not choose them. The cure rate for TB was currently null, but this could always change. If a human was healthy enough, they could fight the disease for twenty years. And by the time twenty years passed, a new antibiotic could be developed, especially with the way Alice leaked scientific advancements left and right. So even though TB of any kind was currently a death sentence, we wanted children that would not last out two years, just to be safe.

We ended up choosing Nikolai and Larissa, who were five and three months old, respectively. They were not related, but they looked alike, and they were only two months apart in age, so they could pass for twins. It was rather sad seeing all those babies already so sick with nothing we could do. It made Carlisle wish for Carlisle II and I wished for him too.

I have never seen Rosalie so happy as when she ran up to our car to greet Nikolai and Larissa upon our return from Russia. Both babies had blond hair, like Rosalie, and looked like they could be her biological children, which was part of our plan for CDC evasion. I could hear her thinking about her and Emmett adopting these two instead of Carlisle and Esme, but we had discussed this: It would be less suspicious for Esme and Carlisle to adopt because they look older. Plus, Rosalie and Emmett would want to go to University with them in order to ensure their safety.

Rosalie took Larissa in one arm and Nikolai in the other, while I was thinking about the vampiric population explosion we were causing… already six eggs implanted, and soon to be eight. I was glad Bella and myself were using the vampiric version of contraceptives, because I really thought three children were enough. Esme and Carlisle were also using contraceptives, at least for now.

Esme kept thinking that in a few thousand years, when her life is not so hectic, she would like to have more children. Or, maybe Carlisle II and Aiden would give her grandchildren. She was often thinking about what Carlisle II and Aiden would be like.

Esme gave each human baby a kiss as Rose walked in the door for the first time. Esme was thinking, 'Rose looks absolutely radiant holding those two. They really do look like her. Maybe it'd be better to let Rose raise them? After all, in only thirteen more years we'll need two more children for Alice and Jasper.'

Emmett came up and kissed the babies next. I was a little shocked by his thoughts. He liked the way Rose looked holding them. 'One hot sexy Mama. I wish I could give her human babies just like these ones. I know we're having vampiric babies, but they're still a long way off, and she always wanted human ones.'

Carlisle came in and gave Esme a hug, before searching out Tahira and Taraji. He had not seen them since we left and missed them.

It occurred to me then that maybe Emmett and Rosalie really should adopt the human babies. Neither Esme nor Carlisle would mind. "You're right, Em. Maybe you and Rose should adopt Larissa and Nikolai."

"You look positively sexy like that," Emmett told his wife, kissing her on the cheek, while making sure to avoid crushing the humans.

"I'd love to, but we agreed Carlisle and Esme should do it."

"Honey, if you want these babies, they're all yours," Esme replied with a smile. "Carlisle and I have our hands full with Tahira and Taraji."

And that was that. Larissa and Nikolai went to live with Rose and Em in their small house. It was hard work at first because both babies were extremely sick. Actually, Nikolai had to be hospitalized and was almost dead when Rosalie retched up her egg.

When we admitted Nikolai into the hospital, we had the CDC breathing down our necks wondering how we had acquired a TB baby. We managed to hide our other TB baby, at the same time that we claimed that Nikolai was an American who we had taken on vacation to Japan with us. We claimed that he must have gotten sick there, even though his TB test to reenter the country had been clean.

The TB test had a one day lag in detection, so that an entire day had to pass after exposure before the test would return a positive result. We took advantage of this loophole, and claimed that Nikolai was among the fraction of a percent to be infected on the day we left. Although, with a name like Nikolai and a family known for adopting, we would never have gotten away with the lie.

So while at that hospital, Nikolai's name was Emmett Jr., and he was Rosalie and Emmett's biological son. He was six months old by then, but we had known he was coming ahead of time, so Carlisle announced Rosalie's pregnancy with twins long before we even chose humans. Since we had announced the births of a boy and a girl, we had to make sure to find a boy and a girl in Russia. And Rosalie and Emmett stayed away from town until the humans came, so that they did not have to explain where their children where.

Our nerves were beginning to wear thin with all of the lies, smuggling, cover-ups, and sick dying babies when Rosalie's egg finally arrived none too soon. The egg was a female, according to Alice, named Lillian Rosalie. Lily would be talented. She had a defensive shield, not a mental shield like Bella, but an actual physical shield. She was not powerful enough to protect others, but still it would come in handy on the battlefield.

Carlisle and I snuck the egg into the hospital and implanted Nikolai in the ICU and the other doctors were amazed how fast he recovered. They were certain he would die in a matter of days, but instead he made a full recovery! Once his TB test came back clean, they reluctantly released him, crediting a new antibiotic with the recovery. So Carlisle and I did not even have to fake his death. One down, and only one more to go.

That said, Nikolai's recovery was a bit too much of a coincidence for those doctors who had been around back when Xavier had been cured of Leukemia. Two terminally ill dying children completely cured? It was a good thing they did not know about Zakaira, Zikare, Noah, Tahira, and Taraji. What would they say if they knew about Larissa, A.K.A. Rosalie Jr.?

I informed the family that we would have to move again. We knew we would have to move anyway, after the babies were cured, because we had not even informed the townsfolk of the correct names. However, we had assumed that we had a few years before we would have to clear out. But with the growing suspicion, Esme went to work preparing yet another new house right away.

We at least had the next place picked out in advance, as always. The next town had a hospital for Carlisle and myself, and a small biotech firm for Bella. And best of all, it was only a hour drive from Jasper and Alice. If we ran, we could be there in fifteen minutes. So we would finally be able to spend more time with our missing siblings.

The most difficult part about moving this time around was uprooting the humans. Tahira and Taraji were still in school, so they would have to change schools, something none of the humans had been made to do so far. We had been attempting to give the humans a sense of stability by not moving while they were still in school, but in this case we had no choice. Luckily, Taraji and Tahira were understanding and even a little excited for the move.

Moving Xavier and Noah would be harder. Noah worked from home, so that was not a concern, but he owned his house and had a girlfriend. We would help him sell the house and buy a new one, but he decided to break up with the girlfriend in order to avoid a long distance romance. Xavier had moved in with Bella and myself, so there was no house to consider and he had no girlfriend, but he did have his job at the insurance company. It was an entry level job, so it would not be hard to find him an equivalent position in the new town. So moving the boys was now looking easier than I thought.

While Esme built the house, and Bella and I prepared to move humans, Rosalie and Emmett devoted their entire lives to trying to make Larissa comfortable while they awaited Emmett's egg. His disgorgement was taking so long that for the first time in Cullen family history, the rumor going around was that Emmett and Rosalie had _not_ gotten kinky when they got down and dirty a hundred years ago. Although this clearly was not the case, because Rosalie's egg was right on time.

While we waited for Emmett's egg, Larissa waited for her cure. She was not as sick as Nikolai had been, so we were not yet at the point where she would need to be hospitalized. And we were avoiding hospitalization at all costs in order to avoid further scrutiny from the CDC. Our family might not be able to withstand an inquiry as to how both of our babies had come to be infected with TB.

Rosalie had been to med school once years ago, and while her classes and knowledge were now outdated, she was still able to handle Larissa's day to day care. But, Carlisle and I made sure to visit several times a day just to check on the baby's condition, because she could take a turn for the worse suddenly, and we might be forced to admit her to the ICU after all.

'Please tell me you have news from Alice,' Rosalie's silent thoughts begged when I stopped by after work.

She looked awful and the stress was really getting to her. She was holding Larissa, tilted face down, and gently patting her back, trying to help the mucus up. Her hair was a mess and she was covered in human baby puke. I could tell from her thoughts that Emmett was making a run to the store for diapers and had taken the newly cured Nikolai with him. Larissa had just vomited all over her, so she was waiting for him to return so that she could clean up.

"Yes, I do. Alice says she saw Emmett. She is still not sure when, but she says it will be soon, probably within the week," I replied.

Her face lit up with the news. "Really? Only another week?" she asked thinking about how her ordeal would finally be over.

Rosalie had retched up her egg almost two months previously, saving Nikolai. But Emmett had still not followed suit, and taking care of a sick baby was really starting to weigh on her. "Yes, really. Alice definitely sees Larissa surviving. Why do you not let me watch her until Emmett comes home, while you go take a shower?" I offered.

"Oh thank you Edward! I take back all of those things I said about you," she replied handing me the still coughing baby.

I never really took offense to her name calling anyway, so I patted Larissa's back and replied, "It is okay Rose. I never held it against you."

"I mean it. I take it all back," she insisted, adding a silent, 'Even the eunuch cracks,' in her head.

I held back a scowl at the memory, but nodded that all was forgiven anyway. I would be the bigger man and forgive her in her time of need. Not only had she lived through a month of Nikolai in the hospital, but also three months of Larissa's illness at home. That was enough to faze any vampire.

With my nod, Rosalie took off towards the shower, and I went through my evening routine with Larissa. I pulled out my stethoscope and listened to her lungs as she breathed. She was congested, but that was to be expected. It was no worse than the day before, so I moved on. She had a fever, but it was mild, and all of her other vitals were holding steady.

So I held her and patted her to help her clear the fluid from her lungs until Emmett came home. He looked almost as worn out as Rosalie when he came in and set down a carseat with a sleeping Nikolai and an armload of diapers and formula, but he eagerly took Larissa from me, taking over the incessant patting of her back. And his smile returned full force when I gave him Alice's news that he would be vomiting soon.

Normally learning that you will be puking your guts out was bad news, but not in this case. Emmett would gladly puke a hundred times if it meant being able to come home to a healthy baby girl and a carefree wife. I gave my brother a clap on the shoulder, and then took off to see my own wife and my own humans. I had wished before to have Alice and Jasper's humans, not grateful for the two I had, but after seeing what Rosalie and Emmett were going through, I was grateful for the two humans I had received.

Emmett finally up-chucked his egg five days later and Larissa was implanted immediately before she could get any worse. Emmett named his egg Angel Rose, after his nickname for Rosalie, and I rolled my eyes at this thought. Did both of them really have to name their eggs after Rosalie?

Alice saw that Angel Rose would also be skilled. She would have an offensive talent, similar to Kate's in that it caused pain upon touch. But instead of feeling like an electric shock, it felt like a burn. It was similar to a chemical burn in that it continued to hurt for days after exposure, even leaving a scar. But vampires do not get burns. No, it would feel more like venom burning the skin. Normally venom does not burn unless the skin is pierced. A venom-burn touch would indeed be unusual, but it was not strong and it could only take down one opponent at a time.

Rose and Emmett could not have been happier, especially because Larissa was no longer coughing all the time. Emmett really took to fatherhood with the humans. And Rosalie, who was loving and caring with all of the pet humans, was especially so with her own. The humans would make good practice for them for when their own offspring arrived.

And when we moved into the new house and the new town, Emmett, Rosalie, Nikolai, and Larissa took up their new roles. Rosalie and Emmett were playing nineteen year old newly weds who had gotten pregnant their senior year of high school. They were passing Nikolai and Larissa off as their biological twins, complete with an alleged shotgun wedding. To complete this scenario, we did not tell the locals about the cured TB, because there was no way to explain away the TB and maintain the lie that they were not adopted.

By this time, the status of marriage among the humans had been downgraded from sacred act to something only done when knocked up or high. The whole institution was looked on with such disdain that the conservatives were lobbying to have the minimum age of marriage raised to forty, because no one under forty could pass through the fires unscathed. The liberals were lobbying to have the archaic tradition outlawed completely.

The fact that Rosalie and Emmett were claiming to be teenaged newly weds was looked upon with far more disdain than the fact that they were claiming to have gotten pregnant during high school. The only thing that prevented the public backlash was our immense wealth, because the wealthy were still allowed to do whatever they wished and break social protocols, even if it involved the dreaded teenaged marriage.

So Emmett and Rosalie set up house as the perfect twentieth century young family in the middle of twenty-second century America. Rosalie took on the part of the doting stay at home mom, while Emmett took up a job working for Esme, helping to establish yet another small architectural firm. And if you thought Esme was devoted to her human children, that was nothing compared to how Rosalie and Emmett felt about theirs.

Emmett and Rosalie's whole lives revolved around those children, from getting them up in the morning, to putting them to bed at night. Rosalie would spend endless hours combing Larissa's hair and tying pretty pink ribbons in it. And when she was not dressing Larissa in custom made antique dress replicas, she was under the hood of her BMW with Nikolai by her side. And it became common to see Emmett playing horsey with two humans on his back, or walking with one human on his shoulders, and a second clinging to his leg.

Larissa and Nikolai had a tutor by the age of three, in addition to being subjected to more tiny tot classes than even Zakaira and Zikare had been. When they were five, they were enrolled in the best private school around. Well, we lived in a remote area, so there really was only one private school within commuting distance, and that was a Catholic school. But, Nikolai and Larissa were made to attend, despite the fact that Rosalie and Emmett were Christians, not Catholics.

And when neither Larissa nor Nikolai took to Catholic school, their parents hired a private tutor to teach the children in their own home. Those two were by far the most loved and the most spoiled human children ever to have existed. Although, with Rosalie teaching them manners, they were politer than Xavier and Noah.


	17. Chapter 15

Definitions: scry means to see the future. This word will become very important very shortly, so keep it in mind when reading the following chapter!

Alice's POV:

Jazz and I had recently disgorged our second set of eggs on the same day. My egg, Ashley Compassio Cullen Whitlock, was disgorged first and my visions showed me a female child with long straight black hair with the gift of empathy. Her empathy was the reason behind the middle name, which is Latin for empath. My first two hatchlings had Latin middle names as well, because Jazz liked the idea of naming his children after what they could do.

Like my Jazz, Ashley would be able to sense and influence the emotions around her. But her empathy was even more powerful, to the point where the effect did not wear off when her presence was no longer felt, leaving a permanent alteration in the feelings of others. And she was a touch clairvoyant, so that she would have a sixth sense about how someone was going to react to a given situation. Or, how someone had reacted in the past. Given this set of talents, she could actually will someone to do as she desired, as sort of a mild mind control.

Within the hour of the emergence of my egg, Jazz followed suit with his egg. This one was a boy, with wavy dirty blond hair. He named him Scryan Brandon Cullen Whitlock, or Scry for short. The middle name was chosen for my human last name, because he has a compulsion with naming his hatchlings after me. And as the first name implies, Scryan would be able see the future, explaining why he chose the name.

Scryan would also be able to change the likelihood of a future. If there were two or three possible futures available, he could alter the odds at which they each would occur. He could make an unlikely future more likely or a likely one less likely. His visions were also more powerful than my own. He could see, hear, smell, and even feel touch like he was actually living in his visions and all sensation from the outside world would be lost.

And Scryan's visions were less subject to loopholes than my own. If Aro did not make the decision to set a newborn army loose, but let Jane decide, then I would not catch it when only watching Aro. Scryan would, because he would see all decisions that are related to the ones he was watching for.

Again, Esme and Carlisle adopted in order to provide dying hosts for our parasitic eggs. They looked once more for children from the foster care system, because they were rotating where they acquired the children from. It took awhile, but eventually I helped them find a two-year-old boy with muscular dystrophy named Skxawng and a five-month-old girl with Alveolar capillary dysplasia named Dava.

My egg was implanted in Dava and Jazz's went into Skxawng. Everyone in our family, even Zikare and Zakaira, came for the implantation. They were the first adult humans ever to be allowed to watch, but with the one hundredth anniversaries of their own implantations just months away, it was deemed safe enough: they would not live long enough to tell.

In fact, Zikare and Zakaira had once again moved in with Jazz and me. Although they both never lived farther than the house next door, we tended to live in sprawling estates with plenty of forest, so the neighboring house was always at least a mile away. Now that the time of hatching was quickly approaching, we all thought it was safest to keep the hosts close at hand.

In the hundred years that we have known them, Zikare and Zakaira had grown into charming elderly women. We were extremely close, and although Esme and Carlisle were their adopted parents, Jazz and I had played a major role in raising them. We were their big brother and sister when they were little. We were their younger brother and sister when they were in college. We were their baby brother and sister when they were middle aged.

We were best friends and colleagues back when we were working in the scientific labs together. And ever since they have been elderly, we have been their great grand-niece and nephew from their long dead adopted siblings. So we really have been close to them for the entirety of their short human lives. Consequently, they did not mind moving in with us as their ends approached.

They had both lost their most recent significant others to old age years ago and although they each had children, they were old and retired or dead. It was always a sad thing to outlive ones children, but the first of their children had not received any genetic engineering, and without it, the average human life span was only eighty years. As a result, they had each already lost their oldest child to old age.

So the twins had lived long, full, happy lives, complete with children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and even a great great grandchild or two. And they had had meaningful and fulfilling scientific careers, changing scientific paradigms and advancing human knowledge. Their ground breaking work paved the way for anti-aging advances that the entire human species was now benefiting from.

And although they were currently in perfect health, none of that would have been possible if my parasites had not cured their AIDs. To the twins, it did not seem a cruel irony to be given life, just to have it taken away. They had had as much life as they could of ever hoped to have and were grateful for it, so they had no issues with my request for them to move in with us and even embraced the idea.

In fact, they were really looking forward to spending their last days with us, because we had two new hosts for them to fawn over. Zakaira and Zikare felt a strange sort of kinship bonding them with Dava and Skxawng. They were all dying before they could even talk. They were all adopted by the elusive Cullen family. They were all saved by our mysterious alien offspring (our alien-hood was still the favored hypothesis among the hosts). And most importantly, they each had one of our kind growing in, and feeding off of, their bodies.

It may sound creepy, but Zikare and Zakaira were fine with it, so none of us ever thought twice about it. On the contrary, the twins were helping Jazz and I to care for the new hosts and the six of us were living in our new modest four bedroom house just off of the main estate. Although officially Esme and Carlisle had adopted Dava and Skxawng, they were staying with us so that Jazz and I could spend more time with them before we had to leave.

This was especially true of Jazz, because he would be leaving shortly after the hatching to prepare our new home. It was cruel to wait until his egg was hatched and then make him leave said egg behind, but it would only be for a year, and it was for the best. Vampiric babies grow so slowly that humans will notice when a year passes with no noticeable growth. And worse, the Volturi and other vampires would think we had immortal children if they noticed. So we would only be able to stay here for a single year before having to remove the hatchlings from human society.

During that year, Jazz would travel north to the Arctic to prepare a place for us to live. Esme and Emmett would be going with him, because they were both skilled in architecture. But after a year, Jazz would come back for me and then we would travel north together with our hatchlings. Once we successfully arrive, Emmett and Esme would come back here and await the hatching of their own eggs.

Jazz could not leave last year for two reasons. First, I needed help protecting Zikare and Zakaira. And second, Jasper had not yet disgorged his second egg. He had to be here for the disgorgement in order for it to be successfully implanted into a host. Now that the implantation was complete, it was only a matter of time before his first egg would hatch. And he could not bear to miss the hatching, so he would stay.

We had debated frequently on the possibility of starting construction years in advance, before there was any danger that Jasper's second egg would arrive. But there were Inuit in the area and if we built and then abandoned a house, it would be noticed. It would draw suspicion among the locals who would only grow more suspicious when the mysterious builders returned. And we could not risk their suspicions, so my husband would be leaving at the most inopportune moment.

My Jazz would only have a month to spend with the new human hosts before having to entrust them to my family, while I would only have a year. We were therefore attempting to make the most of the limited amount of time by insisting that said hosts stayed with us in our home. And that is where Zikare and Zakaira came in, because they had both raised plenty of human children and were helping us out.

Mostly Jazz and I needed help with the feeding of the hosts, because neither of us could cook. Well, Jazz has learned how to prepare a few simple human dishes, such as toast, microwaveable dinners, macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti. I, on the other hand, had been banned from the kitchen when Zakaira and Zikare were babies after catching the toaster and microwave on fire one too many times.

I would like to set the record straight: I did manage to cook two pieces of toast once and Zakaira liked them, so they must have been edible. But it was the second set of toast, for Zikare, which I ruined. It turns out that one must butter the toast _after_ putting it in the toaster, not before. Also, I had a few accidents with the microwave, because metal cannot be microwaved.

So I knew these cooking rules now, but vampires are very flammable and thus a tad skittish around flames, so I was banned and never again allowed to try my hand at cooking. I was, however, allowed to go to the refrigerator and retrieve a pre-made bottle for Dava; she was used to drinking them cold. And I could open up a jar of baby food for Dava and pour it into a bowl and again she would eat it cold. And the most complicated human food item I was permitted to touch was cereal, as I was allowed to pour cereal and milk into a bowl for Skxawng.

So the hosts would not starve if left alone with me, but neither would they have variety in their food choices. This is where Zikare and Zakaira came in, because they could both cook human food. Jazz and I were both a little miffed when their cooking skills exceeded our own, but at the same time, we could not eat the hideous stuff, so we got over it rather quickly.

The twins even helped with diaper changes and midnight feedings, which was a necessity given that Jazz and I were otherwise occupied at night. Unfortunately, humans only sleep for eight hours, so Jazz and I had to settle for quickies every night. My family members always insisted that eight hours does not count as a quickie. It may not be for them, but for Jazz and I, it was about as quick as it got.

In fact, Jazz and I had just finished having one of our famous eight hour quickies, and were currently lying in bed, with his arms wrapped around me. We were not trying to conceive again, so we had taken special precautions to prevent the swallowing of zygotes. As I was lying there, I was looking to our future together with our four little bloodsuckers.

"What do you see?" Jazz asked me.

"The future's shaping up as we get closer to the hatching. Here, I'll draw them for you," I replied jumping out of bed, pulling on a robe, and going to my desk.

I quickly sketched out the two children from my vision. They looked to be about eleven years old, but I knew from their words that they were closer to a thousand. They were very similar in height, but were sitting down, side by side on a couch, so I could not be sure of their exact heights.

They each sat reading with a thick textbook in their hands. The girl, Allison Scientia Cullen Whitlock, was sitting on the left and was holding a book on Einstein's theory of relatively. She had shoulder length wavy black hair and a smile that reminded me of my Jazz. The boy, Jackson Preteritus Cullen Whitlock, had a book on the First World War and his gold eyes were shinning the same way Jazz's do when he is talking about history.

Jackson had extremely long straight black hair that touched the seat cushion and I wondered how far it would fall if he were to stand. Eight thin strands from the front of his long hair were pulled back in a loose weave before joining in a tight braid. He had two strands of hair on each side hanging down in front, and each pair was tied in several places, while the rest of his hair was left free.

I always knew I wanted to leave my egg's hair long, because my hair was so short. Do not get me wrong, I love my hair this way, but I have always wanted to experiment with longer hair, just to know what it felt like and what it would look like. And I wanted my egg to have a choice of hair styles, because long hair can always be cut later, but short hair is forever.

But I never pictured my son with hair this long or arranged in such an intricate manner. And since I did not decide upon this hair style, and I knew Jazz would hate it, I knew it must be coming from my son himself and Jackson would want his hair this way. And I would let him.

"They look very studious, like you. Don't you think?" I asked as Jazz gazed at my finished sketch.

"They look just like my human brother and sister!" he exclaimed.

"Really? I didn't know your human brother and sister had black hair?" I teased.

"Well, no. They both had wavy blond hair, like me. And Allison clearly has your eyes and nose. And Jackson has your ears and mouth and cheeks. But, other than that, they look just like my human relations."

"Hmm. I don't know what any of my human relations looked like. I wonder if I looked like them when I was younger," I pondered.

"We can ask Jackson when he learns how to draw to make you a sketch."

"I'd like that."

"But what'll you do to his hair?" Jasper asked letting his disapproval for the style color his voice.

"I don't think I'll do it. I think he did it himself."

"We'll see. But I wonder what the other two monsters will be doing while these two read…"

"I'll look."

I had just recently seen our second brood for the first time when their eggs emerged, but I had not yet seen them at this age, so I searched this future for where I might find Ashley and Scryan. When I found them, I started extending the sketch to include their location.

It was a good thing that I had grabbed an extra-long sheet of paper and had drawn on it in the typical vertical orientation, even though the original tableau seemed more fitted for a horizontal orientation. But I had seen myself drawing it vertically, and this turned out to be for a reason. I quickly added in a bookcase full of thick textbooks and a desk along the rear wall. Then I started sketching in the ceiling.

"Why are you drawing the ceiling? Where are the children?" Jazz asked letting me feel his confusion.

"Shh. I'm getting to that," I hushed him and continued to draw.

I quickly added in two upside down children perched like frogs on the ceiling. One child, which must be Ashley, was smaller than the two on the couch, and had straight black hair which was tied up into a bun so that I could not tell how long it was. I guess a bun was necessary given her propensity to perch upside down on the ceiling, but still, I wished I could see it let down. But other than the hair style, this child looked exactly like me; much more so than the two children on the couch.

"Is that Ashley? She could be your identical twin. And why's she on the ceiling?"

"Just wait," I instructed beginning to fill in the sketch of the final child.

This child was larger than the two on the couch and as much as Ashley looked like me, this one looked like Jazz: right down to the messy wavy blond hair being pulled down by gravity. His hair even looked to be about the same length as Jazz's, although it was a bit hard to tell hanging down the way it was. Finally I filled in a large grin that was the same one I saw so often on my Jazz's face.

"Is that Scryan? Why's he so much larger than Ashley? He even appears bigger than the older two on the couch. Did you draw him to scale?" he asked.

"Yes. He's larger than the other three, even though he's the youngest."

"Then is he gonna be the tallest?"

"I think so, but this is the oldest I've seen him. I'd never even seen him as more than a baby until just now."

"What're they doing on the ceiling anyway?"

"Here, let me draw you what comes next," I said grabbing three more sheets of paper.

In the next drawing the children on the couch remained unmoved, while the two on the ceiling had rolled over and were dropping down directly overhead the first two. Ashley was perfectly lined up to crash into Allison, while Scryan was lined up above Jackson. They each had their teeth ready to bite and their hands ready to attack.

Then, in the third picture, Allison and Jackson had each moved over, just in the nick of time. They moved in such a nonchalant fashion that it gave the impression that this was a regular occurrence in our household, and they left a space between them. Scryan and Ashley flopped down into the newly created space with both elegance and annoyance. Clearly they had been hoping to catch their siblings off guard and had failed.

"Allison and Jackson just go right on reading after the attack?" Jazz asked.

"It would appear so. From their response I would say that this type of event occurs frequently in our house."

"So, we'll have two studious children followed by two pranksters?"

"Looks that way. I still can't believe how much Ashley looks like me, while Scryan looks just like you," I added.

"It's like they're exact replicates, just with their powers switched," he replied. "Ashley's even short like you."

"I'm not so sure: she looks taller than me already in this picture, and she can't be more than a thousand."

"So a taller version of you. Either way, she's gorgeous.

"Wait, there's more," I said grabbing the final piece of paper.

I sketched in the fight that ensued when Ashley and Scryan refused to accept defeat. The younger two attacked the older two, and appeared to have the advantage with their powers. But the older two performed perfectly choreographed back flips, landing in a perch, ready to fight. While the younger two had the advantage in skill, the older two clearly had the advantage in technique and training.

Jazz's surprise was tangible in the air as he looked at the drawing with his jaw hanging open. "I think they take after you," I said interrupting his thought process.

"Must be: just look at how high those back-flips are! I wish I could stay and watch you draw our babies all day long, but I'm afraid I have to go meet Esme and Emmett, because we're still working on our plans for the new estate."

"Go ahead. I'll be fine with the humans and we'll meet you over at the main house after breakfast."

"Are you sure you can handle it? I remember the time you tried to make toast for Zikare. Esme had to replace the wallpaper in the entire kitchen!" he exclaimed in between fits of laughter.

"Haha, very funny. You're just jealous because you never got to eat any of my special Cajun style toast. It was highly delicious."

"Like you'd know: you've no idea what human food's supposed to taste like, because you've never tried it."

"I'm sure Jackson will be able to find a time when I ate the stuff," I countered.

"I'm sure he will. But, that won't help you to experience the taste of Cajun toast."

"You better stop making fun of me and go meet Esme before she comes over here and drags you to work by your ear."

"Sorry Ma'am. I was just trying to make sure the host of my egg doesn't starve. I'd hate for my baby to go thirsty."

"Skxawng can eat cereal for breakfast. It may taste worse than cardboard, but Carlisle claims that it's highly nutritious for a human," I rebuffed, kissing him gently before he left.

Once we was gone, I pulled out a four part frame that I had just purchased yesterday, having seen that I would want one today. I quickly framed my sketches and hung it on the wall before I heard fussing from the baby's room. I ghosted to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle, making it to the room before Dava had a chance to wake the other humans.

I took Dava into the dining room for her feed. Dining rooms were a previously unused portion of the house, but something that Esme had now taken special care to include, since we had the humans around. Dava was just finishing the bottle when Zakaira and Zikare came in.

"Morning, Alice. What's for breakfast this morning?" Zikare asked teasing me.

"I was just about to open a jar of banana flavored baby food for Dava. Want some?"

"Ew, no! I'll just make Zakaira cook eggs and toast," she replied.

"Can't. Still sleeping," Zakaira replied sitting down at the table with her head in her arms. Unlike her sister, she was not a morning person and when she laid her head down like that, she reminded me of the twenty year old I used to have to drag out of bed to make it to an eight a.m. class on time.

"You never do change sister. If I make the breakfast, then you've gotto change Skxawng when he wakes." The two girls still argued back and forth like children.

"Fine. But he's still in bed. Can't I go lie back down until he gets up?"

"Sure, sweetie," I jumped in before Zikare could refuse her.

Skxawng normally slept in an hour or two longer than Dava, so there was no danger in Zakaira going back to bed, but Zikare would wake her sister up just to have the company. But no one dared wake Skxawng up, because he was beyond hyper all of the time: he was two years old after all. And waking him up, just led to him being extra hyper, followed by extra whiny.

Zakaira went back to bed, while Zikare pulled out ingredients for waffles. "Aren't you excited about Jackson's arrival?" Zikare asked me while measuring flour. "You're normally one to bounce off the walls with your excitement. Why no bouncing?"

"I'm nervous," I answered.

"What's there to be nervous about? You're finally going to be a mother after all of these years: I'm so happy for you!"

"Well I've never seen a baby of our kind before. I have amnesia, so I can't remember the home planet, and these will be the first two babies of our kind on this planet," I answered weaving in bits of the truth with the lies.

"But you have your visions to show you the way," Zikare replied knowingly, while cracking two eggs and adding them to the bowl.

"Yes, and those visions are the only thing keeping me from freaking out. That and Jasper: he's sure that he can handle this parenting thing and said that he's willing to pick up my slack if I suck at it," I replied truthfully, for once.

"I never pictured Jasper as the paternal type," Zikare mused measuring out the vanilla. "When we were growing up, he always kept more of a distance."

"That's because he has trouble with humans. I'm sure you noticed that he has even more trouble with other humans than with the two of you."

"But you'll make a great mother, Alice, I know it: you were always like a second mother to Zakaira and me."

"Thank you. I'm sure gonna miss you two. That's the other reason I'm apprehensive about this change: it means I'll have to lose you and your sister."

"But I'm ready for this life to end and I'm old and I can't live forever. I'm more than happy to bring your child into this world for you. Besides, this baby isn't taking my life: this baby gave me life in the first place. There's no way I'd have made it otherwise," Zikare replied putting down her mixing spoon and giving me a hug.

Zikare and I continued to talk while she ate and then she helped me get Dava ready for the day. Two hours later Skxawng woke up and Zakaira got out of bed and fed him breakfast before changing him. Once everyone was ready, the five of us made the trek over to the main house.

It was only two miles away, so Jazz and I could run it in about a minute flat. Edward only needed twenty seconds. But Zikare and Zakaira were humans, and old humans at that, so the trip took them quite a bit longer. Luckily, they had each learned to ride quads in their youth, so they rode quads over, taking only five minutes to complete the journey.

I beat them there carrying Dava in one arm and Skxawng in the other. "Wow you two are old!" I teased as they arrived.

"Not as old as you. Look how white you are," Zakaira teased back, holding up her ebony arm next to my pale one, after disembarking from the vehicle.

She knew that paleness of skin was how my kind judged aged: the paler the skin, the older. This joke was especially funny given the contrast between our skin tones, and as such, she had been milking it for the last seventy years.

Zikare rolled her eyes dismounting from her own quad. "Zakaira, you only have a few days left to live, and what do you do with it? You tell the same old joke all over again."

"And what're you gonna do with your last days that's so special?" Zakaira asked.

"I'm gonna channel my big fat belly here," she indicated the roundness in her stomach which was caused by the egg, "and see if I can communicate with the baby alien. Do you know how many of my old colleagues would kill to be implanted with an alien parasite just to know that they're out there?"

"Mine too, sister, but I sure wish the little parasites weren't so heavy: I'm getting tired of carrying mine in my old age. It's a good thing this is almost over, because I don't know how much longer I could last."

"Listen to the two of you: you sound like a bunch of old ladies," I chided.

"We are a bunch of old ladies! A bunch of dying old windbags," Zakaira replied.

"Speak for yourself! I still have days left to my life, and I plan to spend them living, not dying you old toad!"

"If you two old toads don't mind, it's cold out here for the new humans, so I'd like to get them inside," I interrupted. Sure I had dressed the humans in parkas, but still, their faces were showing, and Skxawng had already been quiet for five minutes, and that was really pushing it for him.

The twins conceded, but continued to rib each other good naturedly as we went inside. Not two minutes after we stepped through the door, Rosalie rushed in with her two humans, Nikolai and Larissa, in tow. Their house was only a quarter of a mile away, but she made her humans run the whole way while she walked, because it was good exercise and her humans were still young.

"Sorry I'm late: these two run like snails," she said indicating her pets. "So, what'd you see last night?" she asked, overly excited to hear about my latest visions. So much so that she did not even seem to notice when her teenagers headed off to the game room to play videogames.

"I saw Allison and Jackson sitting on a couch and reading," I began.

"That's it? They're just a couple of nerds like Jasper? We need to get you a livelier mate to procreate with."

"No, that's not it. Then I saw Ashley and Scryan perched on the ceiling above them. They were trying to prank the older two, and jumped down on their heads. But the older two saw them coming and moved out the way like this was commonplace."

"Wait, Scryan and Ashley were on the ceiling! What kind of monsters are you raising? Never mind getting you a livelier mate: we need to get you a more normal one."

"Jazz is just fine thank you very much. If you don't behave, I won't share with you what I see your monsters doing," I warned.

"Oh, Alice! No fair! You can't keep this from me. I know you've got a new sketch for me. Where is it? Hand it over already," she insisted.

"Actually, I was busy with my husband. But if you hold my host, I'll make one for you now," I replied handing over Dava after having already passed Skxawng off to Zakaira. I quickly looked for a vision of her hatchlings, drew them, and handed it over.

"What are they doing?" she asked me, handing Dava back.

"They're eating crayons."

"Why?"

"Because Emmett's watching them."

"Emmett! I'm going to kill you!" she screamed. Emmett was in Esme's office, so he could hear the scream just fine, but he did not respond, because he was busy working.

"Relax, Rose. He's working right now. Just wait until lunch and then you can kill him for something he'll do one hundred years in the future."

"How can the future be so set in stone that you can already see that Emmett's going to let them eat crayons?"

"Emmett isn't going to let them do anything: he'll get distracted at some point, and they'll be curious about how crayons taste: they do look colorful. There're worse things that could happen: crayons are non-toxic."

"Non-toxic! To a human maybe, not a v-, not one of us!" she hissed correcting herself from saying the taboo word when humans were in the house.

"Calm down. You're upsetting Dava."

"Sorry, sweetie," she said pinching the baby's cheek's lightly, "but I'm going to kill your big brother Emmett. Does that sound nice?"

"Rissa and Nik will be upset if you kill their father," I reminded her. "Not to mention, your hatchlings will never know their father."

"Fine. Maybe I won't kill him. Where's Bella when I need her? She's not here and I have no one to build killer robots with." Bella and Edward lived five miles away with their humans, but it still took them minutes to pack up their humans to come and visit us.

"Take Nik, he likes killer robots," I suggested.

"Fine, but you have to watch Rissa."

"I'll make Zikare and Zakaira do it: they're family after all."

"Cool. Thanks, Alice! You know how much I love you!" she exclaimed giving me a peck on the cheek and putting her new sketch away, before searching out Nikolai to blow off some steam. I, on the other hand, dropped Dava off with the humans and went to search out my mate, because Esme should be giving him a break very shortly.


	18. Chapter 16

Ch. 16

Note: The physics in the following chapter may be complicated, and although it is possibly true (I read just enough primary journal articles on the subject to confirm that it has not been ruled out, although it is not the favored hypothesis), I made it up. So do not get bogged down in the complexity, just enjoy a baby vampire using this subject to call a 200+ year old Edward stupid: it is a joke.

Edward's POV:

* * *

We had all moved closer to Alice and Jasper's old house with the humans, but now that their humans were so old, they had moved back in with the rest of us, and our family was united once more. We were still close enough that the twins could visit their children and grandchildren, so they did not mind moving back in for their impending deaths. Bella and I lived next door to Noah and Xavier, which was a whole five miles off from the main house, so out of the entire family, we lived the farthest away.

Xavier and Noah were both married once, although Noah was now divorced. Noah had just the one kid, but his novels were successful. Xavier had four kids and was a stay at home dad. And I was pleasantly surprised when Alice informed me that his marriage would last. In fact, out of our first four humans, Xavier was the only one who was not divorced, so all of those lectures on how to treat a woman must have finally sunk in.

Over all, our humans had fulfilling lives and we were there for them through it all. For Bella and myself, the hardest part was not being able to see Nessie whenever we wished. But we some how managed to visit her in the Amazon at least once a year, so the separation was not too unbearable.

Tahira and Taraji went off to the nearest University, which was thankfully only half an hour's drive away. I went to school with both of them while Bella kept an eye on Noah and Xavier. Tahira and Taraji had majored in computer sciences, so it was easy for me to keep an eye on the two of them at the same time. And after graduation, they both found jobs nearby, so that they could stay close to the family.

Bella and I continued to take turns watching Taraji and Tahira as well as our own two humans. Carlisle and Esme still spent time with their humans whenever they could, as they wanted that sense of closeness with their unhatched offspring, but they could not participate in the day to day watching of them while away from the house, because they were busy with work and taking care of Skxawng and Dava, their newly adopted children. The latest humans in the family were playing hosts to Alice and Jasper's latest spawn, Scryan and Ashley.

We acquired both Dava and Skxawng from the foster care system. A single teenaged mother had safe surrendered Skxawng, leaving him only a name: Skxawng Toruk Macto, which was a surprisingly common name these days. His mother was unaware of his disease when she gave him up, as were his first set of foster parents who planned on adopting him. But before the adoption process was finalized, Skxawng started to deteriorate.

Skxawng had Muscular Dystrophy and although many forms of this disease had been cured by modern medicine, his form was the rarest. A cure for each of the dozen or so genes that could be the cause of this disease had to be developed independently. And as scientists and doctors always concentrated on curing the most common forms first, Skxawng's variant of the disease was still untreatable and a death sentence. When his foster parents learned his fate the adoption was canceled and the boy was returned to the foster care system from whence he came.

Dava's story was similar in that she was born to a single mother, but where Skxawng's mother was young, Dava's was old. In the past two hundred plus years that I have walked this planet, humans have pushed the age of conception back further and further. It first started out with working mothers waiting until their thirties to conceive. But then women found that they had to give up their careers for children and began to push the age of child bearing back further and further.

And when all of those biological clocks began to tick out, these women suddenly rushed to their doctors demanding fertility treatments so that they could have a child. And of course the doctors obliged, ever doling out increasingly powerful hormonal treatments; miracle drugs that would allow a woman to conceive a child well past her prime. So it was commonplace to see women waiting until their fifties to bare young. But Dava's mother was pushing the envelope even by this standard.

Dava's mother had put off marrying and raising a family in pursuit of reaching the pinnacle of success in her career. She was a high powered attorney who waited until she reached retirement, at the age of sixty-five, to decide she wanted that family after all. And since she had never had time to find a significant other, she took her dream down to the sperm clinic and did what she did with everything she wanted: she bought it.

This woman took her purchased sperm to her local fertility clinic and requested the latest treatments and she got them, but not without a price. The latest treatments were able to make a sixty-five year old woman pregnant, but they came with dangerous side effects, namely ovarian cancer.

Many of the women who used these drugs developed this cancer and Dava's mother was no exception. But most women were able to make it through the entire pregnancy before the cancer would develop. And as long as they were not pregnant, the latest chemotherapy would cure them, allowing them to live long happy lives with their coveted golden child.

But Dava's mother was not so lucky: she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the same time as she was diagnosed with her pregnancy. She was faced with the choice of terminating the pregnancy in order to undergo chemotherapy, or risk her life for that of her daughter, knowing that she would not be able to use the fertility treatment again. She chose the later knowing that with modern medicine, she only needed to carry the child for four months before viability would be reached. And she was already one month down.

Unfortunately she did not last the additional three months. She died just two and a half months later and Dava was torn from her mother's body just moments after said mother's heart beat its last thump. By some miracle the fetus survived, but her story had no happy turn of events in store, just more misery for the child who was all alone in the world.

Fertility treatments came with other risks; risks to the fetus itself. For every extra decade of age, elderly mothers were ten times more likely to produce children with birth defects than younger mothers. Sixty-five year old women were ten thousand times more likely to produce children with rare genetic defects than twenty-five year old women. Most of these disorders were mild, curable, or treatable, so no one even thought twice about the risk. Dava suffered from one of these defects, but she was one of the unlucky few whose disease was not treatable: she had Alveolar capillary dysplasia.

The humans had no cure for this disorder and children affected with it would only live six to twenty-four months before passing away. So Dava would die and she would do so alone, because her mother was dead and she had no father. Her grandparents were dead and her mother had been an only child. Her mother had friends, but they were elderly and had no desire to comfort a dying baby that they had never known. And that is how Dava came to be in the foster care system waiting for us to save her.

With the disgorgement of Alice and Jasper's second brood of eggs, Dava and Skxawng would now live long and happy lives. And as this last milestone passed, the next quickly approached, because Alice and Jasper's first brood of eggs was due to hatch very shortly. We were all looking forward to the first vampiric birth in a hundred thousand years, but we were also saddened by the impending loss of our human friends Zikare and Zakaira. They had been part of our family for a hundred years and even Jasper was unbelievably attached. He, who out of our entire family valued human life the least, felt like a father to them.

We threw a huge party for Zikare and Zakaira the day before they died. Alice knew the moment they would go, down to the second. So it was with both happiness and sadness that Allison and Jackson came into the world. They were rather helpless for vampires. Not as bad as a newborn human though… they could crawl, but they could not hunt. Alice and Jasper had to break the animal's neck beforehand, so that they could drink.

Jasper carried Allison everywhere, while Alice did the same with Jackson, neither of them wanting to part with the offspring they had never dreamed possible. Jackson had a very peaceful, happy, and content mind, while Allison had a very busy and interesting mind, never stopping for a moment. She was very intelligent for a baby and she even seemed smarter than the adult vampires I knew, especially Emmett. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that she knew everything.

Alice and Jasper had brought Allison and Jackson up to the main house this morning. Vampiric babies do not sleep, so they were even more of a handful than human ones. Although it was hard for them to part with their children, Alice and Jasper really needed a break and some alone time, and this was their last opportunity to do so. So Bella had taken Jackson and I had taken Allison, while their parents went back to their cottage for the last time.

I liked to take Allison aside and ask her questions, because although she did not talk much, I could hear her thoughts. Allison was thinking about intelligence: bitten vampires were smarter than humans. Pure blood vampires were smarter than bitten ones. She was thinking, 'My dumb uncle is going to start asking me obvious questions, again.' She let out a loud sigh as she thought this last bit.

"So, what set off the first universal explosion before the Universe existed?" I fulfilled her prophecy and tried to stump her. Although Allison knew everything, she still had to think what she knew before I could tease it from her mind.

'The Universe was unstable not existing. An entire space-time continuum, however empty it be, was still compressed into an infinitely small space. And there are trillions of them in a single cubic millimeter. Given hundreds of trillions of years, one was bound to explode eventually.' She thought, showing me the truth of this assertion in mental images she has stored in her brain.

These images were both fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful, showing every detail of the first big bang, from the creation of the first quark to the vastness as the Universe creating explosion spread, rippling out into existence. And all of these images appeared as if she had been there to witness these events with her own eyes. What an intriguing gift.

"What created the space-time continuums?" I asked still in awe of what such a little vampire already knew.

'Space-time continuums are not created, they just are. Collapsed space-time continuums are what nonexistence is made out of. Each one is capable of exploding into it's own Universe. The explosions are very unlikely, but given the infinite number of continuums, it was bound to happen that one of them would explode.'

"What happens when more than one is exploded at the same time? Are there parallel Universes?" I asked thinking about what I knew from human physics and the debate over the existence of parallel Universes.

She rolled her eyes at me and I could see why Alice needed a break. 'Gravity causes the Universes to coalesce back into a single singularity in an universal implosion. Implosions are more frequent the more Universes there are. I wish you would stop asking me about that which you can't understand. Your brain is too small.'

"Okay, how long can vampires live for?" I asked changing the subject at her request.

'Ask Jackson that one.'

I called to Jackson, who was across the room in Bella's arms, and repeated my question.

He looked for a vision of the past before replying in his mind, 'No vampire has ever died of old age: we're too violent of a race for that. The oldest vampire so far lived for one hundred four thousand eight hundred twelve years. She was quite elderly and was well into the petrification.'

"Petrification?" I asked.

This time, Allison answered, 'As vampires age they petrify. They grow paler, more translucent. Their skin and bodies become more fragile, making them easier to kill. The process typically takes two hundred thousand years before the vampire turns to dust. It occurs faster if one sits still and lets the venom coagulate.'

As Allison finished her thought, Jackson let out a contented sigh from across the room. His thoughts were full of happiness and approval for Bella, so I turned back to look over at Bella and see what they were doing. It was then that I noticed for the first time that she was torturing Jackson. By torture, I mean braiding his long straight black hair, which was already to his shoulders. She had braided two strands on the side, which she let hang down in front with some loose hair. The hair in the back was left to hang down, but most of the hair on the top was pulled back into a pony tail, which she was still in the process of braiding. I should have been more vigilant and caught this sooner: I had just asked him a question, why had I not caught it then? Jasper will never forgive my lapse in attention.

"Bella! What are you doing to him?"

"His hair keeps falling in his eyes, just like Jasper's does. I was trying to keep it out of his eyes. Besides, this is how his hair looked today in the sketch Alice drew of him yesterday."

"Jasper and Alice are having a disagreement regarding how his hair ought to look. I would like to keep us out of their debate, Sweetie. I think it would be the easiest way to ensure that we each keep all of our limbs intact," I reasoned.

Luckily, Alice and Jasper had come to a compromise already on how their children ought to be dressed. Jasper wanted comfortable, while Alice wanted fashionable. So they compromised on fashionable, but comfortable. I was so sure Alice was going to win that argument that I lost ten thousand dollars to Bella on this bet. The deciding factor, which I had overlooked, that had resulted in the tie, was the babies' opinion themselves. They both liked comfortable, although Allison also liked fashionable, so for once Alice did not get her way entirely when it came to clothing.

"Fine, but he looked really cute in Alice's sketch and you're ruining it," Bella pouted.

"Not every future Alice sees can come true. Here, why do we not trade? You can braid Allison's hair."

Allison's hair was only to her ears, but still, Bella should be able to do something with it. She nodded and passed me Jackson as she took Allison.

'You can't be serious!' Allison's thoughts exclaimed, thinking Bella was worse than me.

Jackson was thinking about a vision he had while Bella was doing his hair. Something about some long forgotten human war, complete with blood, guts, severed heads, and genocide. Jasper loved this kid's visions and was already asking me to write them down. He would probably ask for a record of this vision when he came back to pick his children up.

Now that I had Jackson, I began to undo the damage Bella had caused. As I did so, Jackson started thinking about how much he liked having his hair combed. Great. If he told Jasper we would never be allowed to sit again. It was a good thing he could not talk yet. All he said so far was Mama and Dada, unlike Allison who was saying short two to three word sentences. But vampire babies have perfect memories, so he could always tell later.

"Jackson, listen to me. You cannot tell on Auntie Bella for combing your hair. Dada will be very upset."

Jasper was considering cutting Jackson's long hair, but vampiric hair does not grow back, so which ever style he goes with, Jackson would be stuck with it for eternity. And Alice did not want it cut at all and Jackson was her egg, meaning it was her choice. So although I had no desire to get in the middle of this argument, I knew Alice would eventually win.

Jasper would just have to wait for his own egg; he would be free to do Allison and Scryan's hair however he wished. He already thought Allison's hair was too long, but was going to leave it for awhile because she was a girl. As for Scryan, he was not planning on a modern cut, but the same length as his own. Just as long as his son's hair was not down to his shoulders the way Jackson's was. You never know, maybe Jackson will grow into it: one can always hope.

While I was contemplating this, Jackson was bored. Thus he was searching the past for another entertaining story. He found one staring Major Jasper Whitlock in the Newborn Wars. He laughed and cried, "Dada!" as the Jasper in his vision caught a flying head. Apparently, Jackson was not scared of burning corpses, dismemberment, or flying heads. Good to know.

Just then, Esme came into the room. "There's my grandbaby!" She scooped Jackson up and thought, 'You ought to check on the humans outside.'

'You've got to be kidding me,' Allison thought, jealous that her grandmother had picked up her brood-mate and not her. 'You're just gonna leave me with this one?' Bella was separating Allison's thick hair into two ponytails. It was wavy, tangled, and uncooperative, so it was going to take awhile.

"Sure, Esme. And when you get a chance, Allison would like some attention as well."

I went outside to check on Noah, Xavier, Tahira, Taraji, Larissa, Nikolai, Skxawng, and Dava who were all present for the party tonight. None of them had brought their significant others or children because they all understood our need for secrecy. Besides, it was far easier for them to pretend that their adoptive family was normal when they did not have all of us around to arouse suspicions. Instead, we would interact with their families two at a time, and never at the main house.

Dava was asleep in a carrier under the tree, while Emmett was holding Skxawng. Rosalie was combing Larissa's hair with her fingers, while Nikolai, Noah, Xavier, Tahira, and Taraji were shooting hoops. Tahira and Taraji were winning, because they were younger. Noah and Xavier were getting on in years, and not even having fourteen-year-old Nikolai on their team could save them.

I sat down next to Emmett and asked, "How's it going?"

"Well, the humans are a bit of a pain, especially this one," he replied indicating Skxawng. 'Not only can I not make fun of Jasper for being with egg anymore, but I also have to entertain a rowdy two-year old. Are you sure Carlisle checked him for ADD?'

"Yes, I'm sure: two-year olds are just like that. But that is nothing, Allison keeps thinking about how stupid we all are. She is fuming because Bella is combing her hair. And Jackson continually has visions of violent wars. That cannot be good for a baby," I said leaving out how much it bothered Jasper when Jackson had vision of his own past battles. Jasper loved hearing other war stories, but he rarely spoke about his time with Maria, which was something he rather his son did not see.

"Does Allison like me any better than Bella?" Rose asked thinking that this matter was of great concern.

"Allison only likes Alice, Jasper, and Jackson," I replied. Maybe Esme and Carlisle too, but I left them out, not wanting to admit that it was only her aunts and uncles that Allison disliked.

"What are Alice and Jasper up to today?" Rose inquired.

"Like you have to ask," Emmett replied winking and thinking about what he would be doing with Rosalie if in the same position. Then he started thinking about positions.

"Cut it out, Emmett!" I reacted to his thoughts before answering the spoken question. "They are having some baby- and human-free time. Jackson's very easy going and entertains himself with his visions, but Allison is high maintenance." Allison actually reminded me of Rosalie, because she thought the whole world revolved around herself. "Plus, they have been helping with Dava and Skxawng. You're lucky you only have Nik and Rissa. At least Xavier, Noah, Taraji, and Tahira are all adults now. Less work."

Rose was just finishing Larissa's hair as she asked, "Well, if you're going to stay out here, do you mind if Rissa and I go in to play with the babies?"

"Go ahead. But, can you take Dava in with you?" I asked.

"Sure," Rose replied thinking about how boring sleeping Dava was compared to Jackson and Allison. She loved having her own humans around as babies, but having vampire babies around was spoiling her. Jackson already had her hooked around his little finger and she was making headway with Allison. I would never admit it, but Rose was definitely the favorite Aunt, not Bella. It turned out that Allison was just as fashion obsessed as Alice and Rose was in the process of buying her love with new clothes.

The two women went inside with the baby, leaving Emmett and myself to watch Skxawng. Emmett was thinking about how annoying Skxawng was, because he was currently going through the terrible twos, 'Why do we bother watching the human hosts? Why don't we just implant them and set them free to live their lives. In a hundred years, collect them up again.' Emmett loved Nikolai and Larissa, and would never set them free, but Skxawng, the overactive toddler, he could live without.

"According to one of Jackson's visions, that is the way it was originally done. But the reproductive rate fell very low, because all the host humans were murdered."

'But no one knows about host humans anymore. They'll be just as safe as any other human,' he replied passing me Skxawng.

"True, but there are so many ways humans can die," I replied tickling the child lightly. Skxawng giggled and squirmed in my arms.

After awhile, Bella came out to help Emmett with the humans and I went back inside. I took Allison from Esme, who went off to prepare lunch for the humans. Jackson was sitting on Rosalie's lap loving all of the attention and adoration she was giving him. Luckily she was not trying to put up his hair.

"So, do you know what gifts vampiric babies will have before the eggs are disgorged?" I asked Allison.

'I don't know the genetic make up of any particular egg. I can calculate all of the possibilities from the parental genetics, but I can't tell you which combination you'll get when, or even if you'll actually get a particular combination.'

"Okay, so what is the most talented offspring Bella and I are capable of producing?"

'Mind-reading, tracking, shields, telepathy, and shield breakers are all possible. The most talented would have all of these, but that's very unlikely.'

"Cool. What's the most powerful offspring your parents are capable of producing?"

'Combining Mom's psychic visions with Dad's ability to control emotions can produce the ability to move forward and backwards through time, actually opening up a wormhole. Unfortunately, it's more likely that an offspring who can only move forwards _or_ backwards through time is produced. They'd get stuck in time. It's almost as bad as having the ability to smell the feelings of the future.'

"Smelling future feeling could be useful."

Allison laughed out loud and thought, 'I guess it's better than having olfactory visions of the smells of the future.'

"Visions of future smells would be useful too… Okay, so what is the least talented offspring Bella and I are capable of producing?"

'A very mild shield only capable of shielding it's own thoughts. Or a mind-reader who can only taste the tenor of the thoughts. Both very unlikely.'

"Both of those are still better than nothing. What about Emmett and Rosalie? What's the strongest combination they can make?"

'Emmett and Rosalie are not talented, therefore the gene cassettes responsible for our extra skills are almost randomly flipped for each offspring. The cassettes are all switched to off in non-talented vampires. When two non-talented vampires mate, at least one cassette is activated. At most three can be activated. Any talent is possible, but ones that the parents would think more desirable are more likely, because cassette flippage is influenced by epigenetic markers. Each generation of natural vampiric reproduction increases the number of activated cassettes, so that after a hundred generations of purely vertical inheritance, each cassette will have a gene flipped to the on position.'

"How do the skill cassettes result in our superhuman abilities? Surely one gene is not enough to enable someone to read minds."

'The alleles in the skill cassettes encode transcription factors which turn on the transcription of other genes, that are responsible for our abilities. We use a larger fraction of our brains than the humans do. Mind-reading, psychic visions, and the other abilities all harness areas of the brain that are unused in humans,' Allison answered.

"Okay, so why are some bitten vampires gifted while others are not?" I asked.

'Epigenetics. Did you read any of the scientific articles Zakaira and Mom wrote?'

"Yes, but they were all strictly human only papers. No vampiric transformations mentioned."

'Some humans have altered gene expression levels, resulting from gene marking and differential packaging. Once these unusual gene expression levels interact with the vampiric genes, they activate certain cassettes, producing talents.'

"But Bella and Alice were both manifesting talents in their human form."

'Some humans possess a vampiric cassette. It's left over from our last shared common ancestor. But it isn't needed in modern humans, so it's reverted into a vestigial genetic element. It's even been completely removed from most humans, through gene deletion, but a subset of the population possesses the cassette, which is randomly activated. And without the remaining vampiric genes, the powers remain weak, or barely noticeable. Possessing extra cassettes also leads to extra talented natural offspring.'

I guess that explained why all Jasper and Alice's offspring were so talented, as well as mine and Bella's.

Allison and I were still talking when Jasper and Alice came back. "Daddy!" Allison said out loud. Allison's personality seemed to change whenever Jasper was in the room, because she became just as cheerful and happy as Alice and Jackson.

"How's my sweetheart?" Jasper asked giving Allison a kiss on the forehead.

"Edward boring," she answered reaching out for Jasper, hoping he would save her from me.

Jasper obliged his daughter's request and scooped her up into his arms. "You only have to put up with him for one year before we move north," Jasper reminded her. Vampiric babies grow so slowly that after a year, humans would notice. So, Jasper and Alice were moving north, to the Arctic Circle, where they would not run into vampires or humans. Tomorrow Jasper, Esme, and Emmett were leaving to break ground on the new house. In a year, Esme and Emmett would switch with Alice, Allison, and Jackson.

The house would not be done in a year, but the guesthouse would be. Vampiric babies were more resistant to the elements than human babies, but Arctic conditions were extreme, so they would stay in the guesthouse. Alice and Jasper would finish the main house while they waited for us. And each of us would join them when our own vampiric babies emerged.

"Let's get this party started!" Emmett exclaimed as he entered the room.

Alice did not have to be told twice to start a party, so she immediately called the entire family, including humans, to attention and began the human approved festivities. This involved feeding the humans a massive feast and watching home movies. It always amazes me how much a human mind can forget: the hosts were all fascinated watching the movies in which we all looked perpetually the same year after year. They already knew this, but seeing the proof of it in video form was mind boggling.

After the movies finished, it was getting late, so we ushered all of the humans off to bed. And once the humans were asleep for the night, the farewell party began. Bella and Rose started off with a killer robot battle. Acid spitting was no longer permitted after an incident last year. Nikolai had stepped in the acid before they had a chance to clean it up. He did not even realize this before tracking acid all over the carpet in the main house. Esme was upset that the carpet had to be replaced, and ever since the bots have been acid free.

Bella's bot shot a great glob of goo at Rose's bot, jamming the chainsaw arm. Rose's bot used its circular saw to cut off the goo flinging arm of Bella's bot. Bella's bot launched a water balloon, which busted open against the chainsaw arm of Rose's bot, drenching it in water. Rose's bot short-circuited and sparks flew.

"Way to go, Bella!" I cheered. Allison and Jackson were both thinking their aunt was cooler now that she had won.

Rose was making a note to self, 'Make robot waterproof next time.'

Then Emmett suckered us into a wrestling match, "Come on guys! This is the last chance we have for some fun!"

First, Carlisle lost to Emmett. Emmett had used several of the new moves Jasper had been teaching him and he was getting a lot better. But when it was Jasper's turn to wrestle, he beat Emmett one handed, while he held Jackson in the other. He even stopped to give Emmett some pointers.

When it was my turn to wrestle Jasper, I distracted him by feinting towards the baby. He over-compensated and I won. I rarely beat Jasper anymore. Either we tied or he won, so I was feeling rather proud of myself and Jackson was definitely impressed.

Emmett was thinking about trying that one next time as he exclaimed, "Awesome, bro!"

Next we had a family baseball game in a clearing in the forest: Alice, Esme, Rosalie, and myself against Emmett, Jasper, Carlisle, and Bella. My speed always biased the game in my team's favor, so I was given the weaker players. Their team had the better hitters, but Alice was a better pitcher, even carrying Jackson. In the end, we won six to two.

Bella had gotten a home run, because I always made a point to run slower when it was Bella's turn. Not so slow that she would notice, but normal vampiric speed so that the ball had a chance to hit the ground before I threw it back into play. Bella's home run allowed Jasper, who was on first, to also clear home.

There was a very loud argument over whether Allison counted as also clearing home, because Jasper had been carrying her. Esme ruled that the baby did not count because she had not been at bat. Emmett protested claiming that Allison went up to bat with Jasper. In the end Carlisle sided with Esme that the baby did not count. Besides, if Jasper carrying Allison counted as two, then Alice carrying Jackson counted as two as well, bringing the score to seven- three.

Afterwards we went inside to listen to one of Jackson's stories. Jackson had a vision showing how the last of the hobbits died out. Since he could not talk, I translated.

"Hobbits were not indestructible like vampires. They were much easier to kill than werewolves or shape-shifters. They had blood in their veins, a pumping heart, and no magical abilities. They were just short, big footed, hairy humans with no chins. They were carnivores, which hunted together with long sharp spears to bring down prey ten times their size," I began the translation of Jackson's vision.

"Baby humans seemed like easy game to them. The humans got fed up and marched up to a hobbit cave with their torches. They set fire to the surrounding forest and the hobbits were trapped inside. They searched out every cave on the island and repeated the torching until there were no hobbits left. A similar fate had befallen the elves thousands of years earlier, minus the baby human eating, as they were vegetarians."

By the time the stories ended, dawn was just breaking over the eastern horizon, signaling the end of our party and last day together. Everyone hugged and whispered parting words to be safe and come back home soon. Then Jasper, Emmett, and Esme slipped off into the forest as the sun rose into the sky, leaving before the humans awoke.

In the morning, Bella and I took our humans back home with us. We would take turns keeping watch over our humans so that we could help out at the main house. Rose and Carlisle had taking care of Skxawng and Dava covered, especially because Nikolai and Larissa were old enough to help. But Alice always needed help with Jackson and Allison.

* * *

Chapter End Notes:

Now that the baby vampires are here we should probably go over how to calculate what developmental stage they are in. Since they emerge the size of one year olds and grow one hundred times slower than humans, the following equation can be used:

apparent age = (actual age/100) + 1

So if I say that they are 300, this means that they are 4 in human years.

What? Did you think that there were not going to be any equations to memorize when reading this story? That is an easy one. The hard part comes in when you factor epigenetics into vampire size: male vampires have larger babies than females and male offspring are bigger than female offspring. Because Scryan and Aiden and male offspring of Jasper and Carlisle, they will be the tallest two. Also, Ashley and Lily are female offspring of Alice and Rosalie, so they will be the shortest two. Now combine that with the above formula, and you should be able to picture the correct sizes of the baby vampires :)


	19. Chapter 17

Ch. 17

Edward's POV:

The following year Jasper returned for Alice, Allison, and Jackson. The four of them traveled north before Esme and Emmett returned and three more years past before Larissa and Nikolai went off to college. Rosalie and Emmett went with them, leaving Esme and Carlisle alone with Dava and Skxawng at the main house. Larissa wanted to be a schoolteacher, so Emmett decided to give that career path a go, because he was always up for trying new things.

Nikolai had grown up watching his mother build killer robots and rebuild engines. By the age of twelve Rose had him under the hood of her BMW. By fifteen he was building bots alongside Rose in the workshop by the garage. So it was only natural that he would choose a mechanical engineering degree. Rose decided she could use a refresher, and signed up as well.

While the family of four was away at University, Alice called from the Arctic to warn us of the Volturi's impending visit. Jane, Felix, Bastien, and Demetri would stop by to check on our family. They would be in the area anyway because the southern covens were getting a little carried away with all the wars. The human population hit a slump and the humans noticed and grew suspicious.

Two covens in central Mexico were battling for control of Mexico City. Jasper knew one of the guilty covens, because he had fought them with Maria, although Maria and her army had been destroyed a few years back. The other coven was new to the scene and he was unsure from whence they came. There were so many newborn vampires set loose in Mexico City that the humans blamed a mutant flu strain for the loss of life.

So the Volturi were on their way to clean house, again. The southern covens typically incurred the wrath of the Volturi once every hundred years, so this was nothing new. And since they were already headed to Mexico City, it would not be much additional work to travel north and pay us a visit as well. Once they ensured we were not up to anything, they would head back to Volterra.

Alice, having thoroughly examined our options in her visions, left very specific instructions for all of us. Carlisle and Esme's visit would be the closest call, because they still had the juveniles, Dava and Skxawng, living with them. Since they were children, they could not live on their own, but Alice still considered futures where we sent them away.

Dava was barely five, while Skxawng was seven, so boarding school was possible, but not common at their age. But Alice saw that if the humans were sent to boarding school, their lives would be unduly interrupted and the Volturi would still find out about them. And she saw that Skxawng and Dava would be frightened to be away from their parents; every bit as frightened as they would be to come face to face with four blood thirsty vampires.

Even though they would be frightened, we still would have sent the humans away if it meant that they would be safe from the Volturi. But Alice did not see this plan working. The Guard would stop by the hospital and question Carlisle's boss about our family. The Chief of Staff would reveal that Carlisle and Esme had two young children in addition to other, older, adopted children.

The Guard would not ask about grandchildren, so neither Nikolai nor Larissa would be mentioned. And Carlisle's boss did not even know about Noah, Xavier, Taraji, and Tahira, so they would not be discovered. The Guard would know that all of the older children mentioned were vampires, but would instantly know the younger two were not. How could they be unless we had immortal children?

So the Guard would know about our youngest two humans whether we tried to hide them or not, but if we hid them, their suspicions would grow. They would stick around insisting that they be introduced to our humans and we would give in, but this would not alleviate the growing impression that we were hiding something. And the situation would only worsen when Jasper and Alice's absences were noticed. They would question what became of our missing siblings, as they had been living with Esme and Carlisle the last time they came to check up on us. So Demetri would track them and know they were in the north.

The Volturi Guard would then travel north to investigate what Jasper and Alice were up to. Our hide-out would be discovered. And, worst of all, Alice could not see how they would react to vampiric babies. Would they let us alone? Would they take the babies back to Volterra to study? Would they kill Allison and Jackson? Would they kill us all?

Alice could not see how they would decide, because Aro, Marcus, and Caius had never thought about the possibility and did not yet know themselves how to respond. Only time would tell what would happen and we could not take the chance of an unfavorable outcome. As long as Alice was blind to the future, we could not let that future unfold, so we decided to admit to keeping human pets, go about our lives as before the Volturi visit, and let them see us how we really were.

Alice could see the response to this future. The Guard would be outraged that we were keeping human pets and insist that they be slaughtered or changed. Carlisle and Esme would point out that the humans were still children, just five and seven years old. They would swear that we would change them when they came of age, but for now the children were ignorant of our affliction.

Jane would refuse to accept that humans could live with our kind and not know something was up. Carlisle would assure her that the humans thought we were aliens, and were completely oblivious to the truth, but Jane would insist on questioning the humans herself. Over the phone, Alice told me word for word of the conversation taking place in her visions.

"Young one, are your parents humans?" Jane would ask Dava.

"No, they're aliens, like yourself ma'am. Are you from the home planet?" Dava would ask meekly. She was very smart and articulate for her age.

Jane would smile and reply, "Why yes I am. What do you know about our home planet?"

"Nothing. My parents never talk about it whenever my brother, Skxawng, and I ask. They said that knowledge is dangerous for us to have and they won't tell us," Dava will answer.

Esme would be scared to death that Jane would use her power on the little human, but thankfully, Jane would realize that that would give her away to the humans, as they did not yet know about our powers, and so would refrain.

"What kind of a name is Skxawng?" Jane would ask.

"I don't know ma'am," he would reply.

"It's a very common name amongst the humans," Esme would answer for her son. "In fact, there are two other Skxawngs in his class."

"You there, Skxawng, how old are you?"

"Seven ma'am," he would reply.

"And what are your parents?" Jane would continue her questioning.

"Ma'am, I agree with my sister: my parents are aliens. I'm pretty sure they only take this human form while they are on this planet so that they blend in. But, we'll never tell the humans. Our parents are good to us and we don't want them to get hurt. We'll keep your secret, just please don't hurt them or take them from us," Skxawng will plead.

"Will you too, young one, keep the secret?" Jane will ask Dava.

"With my life. I love Mommy and Daddy," Dava answers in Alice's vision.

"One more question: what do your parents eat?" Jane would ask Skxawng and Dava.

"Um…they don't eat. I think they eat water, like plants," Dava would answer.

"That's stupid. They never go in the sun, so they aren't plants!" Skxawng would exclaim. "I bet they eat alien food that they bring with them from the home planet. They never eat in front of us because they don't want us to see their alien food. Duh."

Jane would then be satisfied with her interrogation and turn to leave, but Skxawng would stop her with a question of his own, "Ma'am? What about Mars?"

"What about Mars?" Jane would ask.

"Mom and Dad won't tell us if your kind have traveled with the humans to Mars. Are there any aliens in the new colony?" Skxawng would ask.

"No: we're not on Mars," Jane would answer truthfully before departing.

"Yes! I knew it! Dava, didn't I tell you that if Mom and Dad's kind were part of the Mars mission that it wouldn't be failing?" Skxawng will ask his sister as the vampires leave. Jane and the others will overhear it, of course, but will just chuckle as they continue on their way.

The humans had landed their first manned expedition to Mars fifty years previously, with the goal of terraforming the planet and establishing a human colony. The initial voyage was successful and the terraforming efforts had raised the average temperature of the dead planet and restored liquid water to its surface.

But that was when the mission suffered its first set back: the native Martian life-forms that had been frozen in the barren soil for the last four billion years unfroze. And since these species had evolved on Mars, they were adapted to Mars' harsh climate, and were thus far more hardy and sturdy than the Earth microbes released in the terraforming process. Plus, one of the native species evolved the ability to parasitize several species of Earth microbes, further decimating populations of Earth microbes.

So the Earth terraforming microbes were out-competed and parasitized by the Martian species, which were similar to our RNA viruses here on Earth. There were only two differences between the Earth RNA viruses and the Martian life-forms. First, the Martian species contained ribosomes, which are RNA catalysts that catalyze protein synthesis. The Martian viruses package ribosomes and other protein synthesis machinery inside their protein coat during replication. But on Earth, ribosomes are only found in cells, with no present day Earth viruses containing their own complete protein synthesis machinery, due to their exclusively parasitic lifestyle.

The Martian life-forms were similar to Earth's RNA viruses in that their reproductive form was composed of only RNA in a protein coat, in addition to the few enzymes and ribozymes that were contained within the coat. But the second difference between the Martian viruses and their Earth equivalents was that the Martian species emerged from their protein coats and assembled plasma membranes _de novo_, without the presence of cellular life-forms to parasitize. Although, there were a few Martian species capable of a Earth-like parasitism of cells, as well as the membrane enclosed form of Martian viruses.

The presence of these Martian species was forcing scientists to rethink how to define life: they were similar and evolutionarily related to RNA viruses, which were previously not considered alive because they were strict intracellular parasites. But with the existence of non-parasitic Martian RNA viruses complete with ribosomes, a viral life-form could now be placed on the tree of life. And as it turns out, it was placed basally to the three domains of cellular life.

Allison, during the year she spent with us, had explained that this relationship between the Martian life and life on our own planet was due to a meteor that crashed into Earth over four billion years ago. This meteor broke off a chunk of the Earth, complete with a sample of Earth's current dominant life form, which was a member of the so-called RNA World, and thus the ancestor of both today's RNA virus and the Martian life. This chunk of Earth traveled through space and eventually rained down on our neighboring planet, Mars, seeding it with life.

On Earth, the RNA based life-forms were later overrun with DNA and cellular based life, and quickly adapted to parasitizing these more prevalent forms of life, losing their ribosomes and ability to live independently in the process. While on Mars, the RNA-virus like life-forms quickly adapted to the barren planet, only to freeze over along with the planet. And now that the Martian RNA-based life was defrosted and thriving again, it was causing major havoc on the human's terraforming efforts. Consequently, the estimates of time to completion for the project had multiplied by a factor of ten, hence Skxawng's insistence that our kind could not possibly be involved with such a doomed project, and his question to Jane.

After her interrogation of our humans, Jane and the other Guard members would agree that Carlisle and Esme were clearly suffering from dementia due to the animal blood diet, but were not a threat to our kind. The humans were clearly clueless and way too young to be changed. Plus, Esme and Carlisle promised to change them when they came of age, so the Guard would leave them be.

We all felt bad that the young humans would have to face Jane, a terrifying vampire, but Alice assured us that they would be fine. They would be scared, but they would come through for us in a big way and their testimony would end up being the deciding factor, leading to a favorable outcome. Esme would just have to give them some extra motherly love after it was all over, as well as prepare them for the ordeal in the first place.

After the four Guard members finished questioning Esme and Carlisle, they would stop by my own cottage. Rosalie and Emmett would returned from University and be waiting with Bella and myself, in order to avoid Jane coming to them and noticing their pets. And the other four humans all live in their own houses, which are located in the town and not even on our land, and so will not be discovered by the Volturi. Plus, we will make sure to distance ourselves from the humans in the days before the arrival of the Guard, to ensure their safety. And thus with Alice's warning, we would be more than prepared for the visit.

When the Guard finally came, they did not even notice the humans. All they found was an innocent coven of four vegetarian vampires.

"You must have the stupidest humans in existence to mistake vampires for aliens," Jane began when the Guard reached our cottage after her visit to the main house.

"They are average for humans: we just do a really good job planting false information and pretending to be aliens. Especially Emmett. What language were you speaking to them last time you came over?" I asked my brother.

"That was Klingon and you know it! Don't you pretend that you don't speak it too: you watched every Star Trek episode and movie with me!" Emmett exclaimed.

"Yes, but I did not read the book," I countered.

"But you read my mind as I read the book!" Emmett argued back as if we were not being questioned by terrifying blood thirsty power hungry vampires who wanted nothing more than an excuse to rip our heads off and burn the pieces.

"So you've fooled the human children, but where's the hybrid and her mate?" Jane asked me referring to my daughter and stopping my banter with Emmett.

"They are no longer part of our coven and have not lived with us for many years," I answered.

"They're nomads then? They aren't part of a coven?"

"Not quite: they eat human food and settled in a human city."

"They eat what! That's disgusting," Jane replied thinking that she ought to report this behavior to Aro.

"They are hybrids Jane: they are capable of eating human food and doing so makes it possible to live a normal life. They do not even have to hide from the humans," I replied convincing Jane that this was not a matter that required Aro's attention.

"But the two of them are alone, correct?" Jane asked after a long pause in which she decided to drop the whole eating human food issue.

"Practically. But the other hybrid, Nahuel is with them. He mated with the female wolf. The two wolves are related, so the four of them travel together blending in with the humans," I answered, leaving out the other hybrids. Aro would not be pleased to know that the eight hybrids had formed a coven. Nor that our covens were allied, or that the hybrid coven lived so close to the Amazonian Coven.

"Where are Alice and Jasper? They weren't with Carlisle and Esme," Jane asked now that she was satisfied that Nessie and Jacob were not a threat.

"Alice and Jasper adopted our coven. They were not made by Carlisle and have no permanent link or bond with us. They come and share their lives with us when they deem fit and they are free to go and do as they please. Jasper has a nomad brother, Peter, who he keeps in regular contact with. The last we saw of Alice and Jasper they were leaving with Peter and heading south, to South America. They wanted to live a more nomadic life-style, because Jasper was having trouble maintaining a life-style with a permanent residence. And he could not stand the animal blood any longer.

"Jasper never valued human life like the rest of us; he was mostly around just for Alice's sake. When Alice realized how much he was suffering, she agreed to leave. We cannot maintain a human-diet and a permanent residence, so Carlisle insists that we leave if we must drink human."

"When was the last time you saw Alice and Jasper?" Jane asked, unsure whether or not to believe our story. She definitely sympathized with Jasper's inability to stick to an animal diet. 'Finally, one sane Cullen.'

"Four years ago. Right around the time Carlisle and Esme went insane and adopted the human pets. I think Carlisle's growing insanity was the final nail in the coffin that sent Alice and Jasper packing," I replied using Jane's own thoughts to formulate my answer.

"Well that explains it," Jane replied, convinced that any vampire would flee and renounce vegetarianism once their leader went off the deep end and adopted pet humans. She was so convinced as to the truth of our story that she did not even ask Demetri to track down Alice and Jasper. "But why have the four of you stayed?"

"We haven't," Emmett answered. "My wife and I haven't been living here. My brother called us when he heard your thoughts approach, so Rosalie and I ran back in case they needed help: we weren't far. Our father and mother may have lost it, but we still wanted to protect them if things went sour. Besides, they're so loopy now that they probably wouldn't even be able to defend themselves."

"And you, Edward, why have you and your wife stayed?" Jane asked.

"I'm watching out for the old man on a regular basis. I work with him so that I can monitor his actions. That way I will be able to stop him from revealing our secret when he goes completely off of the deep end.

"And also I stay so that I can monitor the pet humans' thoughts. If they get close, I will make Carlisle and Esme either give them up, or take them off the grid with us. And if they ever figure out what is really going on, I will change them immediately. That is if they are old enough. If not, we will keep them secluded away from other humans until they are old enough to turn.

"But I fear that we will have to remove our father from human civilization soon; maybe even before those humans of his grow up," I replied planting the seed for our impending removal from civilization.

"If you're aware of the dangers of drinking animal blood, why is it that the four of you have continued to do so?" Jane asked staring at my gold eyes. Our four sets of gold eyes were proof enough that we had not renounced our ways.

"It is only an exclusive animal diet that caused Carlisle, and to a lesser extent Esme, to lose it. We have all started drinking human on the side to supplement our diet. We still do not drink it very often, because we have to travel a great distance for it to be safe. But the human snacks keep us sane, while the animal main course allows us to stay in one place," I lied smoothly.

"You Cullens are a stubborn lot: when faced with proof that your lifestyle is harmful to your bodies, you continue to follow it," Jane scoffed.

"We have to in order to stay with Carlisle: he is my father and I can't abandon him. But I assure you that the moment we remove the old man from human civilization, we will return to our natural nutritional source. And the four of us will do our best to force some down Carlisle's throat as well, in the hopes that his insanity is reversible," I replied gravely with another lie.

"I hope for all your sakes that it is reversible," Jane shuddered before announcing her departure.

'My man, I can't believe you just pulled that off! Badass,' Emmett thought, rambling on with excitement at the close call. 'Rosalie and I owe you big time for getting the inquisition off our backs without them insisting on checking on us and noticing our humans. After this, I owe you big. I'll even apologize for that time I outed you at high school: I'm sorry.'

Emmett was referring to the high school we all attended in Denali before Bella joined the family. A human girl name Miranda had had a huge incessant crush on me, and had taken to stalking me, despite my insistence that I was not interested. Jessica Stanley and her little human crush had nothing on Miranda the psycho stalker. It got to the point where Miranda actually showed up on our doorstep, clueless to the presence of a house full of thirsty vampires, and professed her undying love for me.

Alice barely got Jasper away and into the forest before he drank Miranda and Emmett was so upset by this girl's nerve to barge into our world and almost sabotage our brother's efforts at self-control that he decided to tell her that I was gay so that she would back off. As soon as that idea popped into his head, Alice had a vision in which all of our Miranda problems disappeared. So she pulled out her ginormous old-fashioned cell phone from her purse, called Emmett from the forest, and told him to do it.

Emmett complied with Alice's request. Before I could stop him, Emmett was telling Miranda that I could never return her affections because I was gay and liked boys, so unless she was hiding the sausage, she best leave. She left, but by the time school rolled around on Monday morning, Miranda had already told the entire school that I was gay.

Honestly, being outed was better than having Miranda following me around like a sad puppy, so I decided to go along with it. Of course this meant getting hit on by Kyle, but that too was preferable to being hit on by Miranda. At least Kyle was a nice sweet boy and we developed a friendship, bonding over our alternative lifestyles; being celibate was an alternative life-style in the late nineteen hundreds.

And Kyle was just so happy to not be the only gay in that tiny school that I never did tell him that I was not really gay. But he did pluck up the courage to ask Emmett who my type was, since it was obviously not him. And once again, Emmett failed to keep his big mouth shut. Instead he pulled out a picture from when we visited the Nigerian Coven the previous summer and pointed out Jideofor, who was the only single gay vampire on the African continent. Emmett even started describing our proposed make-out session in the Nigerian Mangroves.

Needless to say, I interrupted Emmett's fun and was quite upset with him. It was one thing to out me to stave off Miranda, but another to start making up stories of hot gay loving under the African sun. It just reminded me too much of the real reason Esme had insisted that we visit Nigeria in the first place: it was a set-up, because she was still hoping that I was gay and that I would be attracted to Jideofor.

Esme said that a mother had a right to set up her son on blind dates once a year, and after I refused Tanya, Kate, and Irina, Esme decided to try male vampires instead. So every summer for a decade she insisted that we visit a different coven in order to meet gay vampires. Sometimes these covens had single males like Jideofor, other times we met mated pairs, like Vithoon and Kavi in Thailand. Esme was hoping that I would become more open and accepting to having an alternative sexuality by seeing happily mated couples, and that I might mate with the single ones we met. At first I resisted, but after a few years I realized that it made Esme happy and it was easier to go along with it than to protest. And it was kind of nice to travel around the world and meet new vampires.

And after all of these years, Emmett was just now finally apologizing for the lack of discretion on his part. I had forgiven him years ago, so I replied, "Thanks Em," and clapped him on the back.

And while Emmett was apologizing for something he did a hundred fifty years ago, the four Volturi Guard members joined the rest of the Guard on their way back to Volterra. Once Aro learned of Carlisle's dementia, and that our coven seemed to be permanently fractured, he ruled that we were no longer a threat. He would no longer waste the time of his Guard by sending scouting parties to check up on us. He would not even bother to check that we had changed our humans, trusting that the four of us would take care of it if Carlisle and Esme were too weak to do so.

And when we disappear off the face of the earth, the Volturi will just assume that we are caring for our demented parents in seclusion, and that Carlisle and Esme are no longer capable of inconspicuously interacting with the humans. And that we might even be forcing human blood down his throat in an effort to cure him. Either way, the Volturi would not notice or come looking for us and we would be in the clear.


	20. Chapter 18

Ch. 18

Edwards POV:

When Larissa and Nikolai finished University, Rosalie and Emmett moved back into their house, while their humans used their trust funds to buy neighboring houses. Rose and Emmett even agreed to keep an eye on Taraji and Tahira once Noah and Xavier grew too old, and Bella and I had to leave. Emmett and Larissa got jobs at the local high school, while Rose and Nikolai started up another car repair shop.

When Skxawng went off to University, majoring in architecture, Esme decided to go with him. She had not been in over two hundred years and thought she could use a refresher. Skxawng had chosen architecture after watching Esme at her craft; he even had a part time job helping out at her company. In the end, the two of them went right back to work at her company, and he moved into a place of his own nearby.

Dava, on the other hand, was very close to Carlisle, and spent her free time volunteering at the hospital. It was inevitable that she would go the pre-med route. Bella decided to attend undergrad with her, to freshen up on her biology degree. But since Bella hates sick people, Carlisle decided to attend med-school with Dava. I had always kept Carlisle up to date with the latest techniques and treatments, but it has been years now since the last time I went to med-school. Carlisle had not been in even longer still and was long over-due for a re-fresher course. He even went with her out of State for a two-year residency. This time around, Carlisle kept me up to date.

Skxawng had an elaborate wedding ceremony with his husband, because the United States constitution had long ago been amended to include the right of homosexuals to get married. But the loving couple decided not to have children. They could have used donated eggs and had their embryos screened for muscular dystrophy, like Noah had had his screened for Menkes disease, but they just did not want kids.

Dava got married, divorced, had four children, and became a respected surgeon at the same hospital where Carlisle and I work, but not necessarily in that order. She not only had her embryos screened, but she also had the mutant allele responsible for her Alveolar capillary dysplasia removed, so her children would not even be carriers. It amazes me how far reaching Alice and Zakaira's work on epigenetics really was. Without that knowledge, replacing the mutant allele would have done more harm than good.

After my rounds at the hospital, I stopped by Noah's house to check on him. He invited me in to stay for a chat, as always. Being a writer he needed inspiration for his novels, and as a vampire, I was apparently good inspiration. Also, he lives alone and gets lonely, so out of all of the humans, he tends to stop by the most often.

Noah once wrote a book loosely based on Alice's life. In it, a young alien girl has psychic visions of a gruesome alien warrior. The alien girl was locked away in an alien mental institution until her alien warrior saved her. Needless to say, Noah thought we were aliens.

He was currently in the middle of writing another Sci-fi adventure about some aliens and their pet humans, but was having trouble with the motivation of the aliens. Why did they keep the pet humans? To help solve this problem, he was asking me about my own species, "Do all aliens like humans?"

"No. Most of us despise humans. It was Carlisle who introduced the rest of us to the value of human life," I answered.

"How did your family feel when Dad introduced this concept?" he asked.

"Well, Carlisle started respecting human life before the rest of us were born. He was already a doctor at a hospital when I was born."

"What about Mom?"

"Even before Esme. Carlisle had me before he met or married Esme."

"Then who's your biological mother?"

"We are capable of producing offspring without a second parent. Carlisle was my only parent until he met Esme. Now, Esme is my mother."

"Okay, what about the others?"

"Rosalie, Emmett, and Bella were born after Esme and Carlisle married. Rosalie was also Carlisle's, but Emmett and Bella were Esme's, so they aren't biological related to us. Our reproduction works differently than yours."

"Is it like parthenogenesis?" he asked.

"Yes, it's similar, except that our parthenogenic offspring are not identical to the parent," I replied.

"And Jasper and Alice were adopted, right?"

"Correct. Jasper is actually older than me: old enough to be my grandfather. And Alice and I are the same age."

"So how'd Jasper and Alice feel about joining a human-loving family?"

"They sought us out. Jasper's mother led a very violent life-style. It was hard on him because of his empathy. After that, he needed a calm peace-loving family. Alice saw us in her visions, and knew we would be perfect."

"But, how do they feel about the pet humans?" he asked.

"Well, Jasper did not like it at first. He was worried it violated our laws. But Alice saw it working in her visions, so she convinced him it would be all right."

"Your kind has laws against interacting with humans?"

"Yes, a few. We are supposed to keep the existence of our kind a secret. That is why I cannot tell you everything about us. And if you ever run into another of our kind, do not reveal what you know: the penalty for a human knowing too much is death," I stated stressing this last point.

"I understand. How'd the family feel the first time Dad brought home a pet human?"

"Well, I actually brought home the first human. My daughter Nessie's mother, before Bella was born. Nessie is half human, but that was over a hundred fifty years ago, and humans did not live very long back then," I started to explain.

Noah knew I had a daughter, but he had never met her, and did not know that Bella was her biological mother or where Nessie was. There was no way to explain a human being converted to an alien, so this knowledge would blow our cover. We could have said Nessie was purely alien, but we had shown the humans pictures of her and she was obviously different than us. I had heard the suspicion in their thoughts and implemented the lie to stave off said suspicion.

"Jasper and Rosalie were very upset. According to our laws Nessie's mother should have been sentenced to death for knowing. They wanted to carry out the sentence themselves. Emmett did not mind, but he had to side with Rosalie anyway. Carlisle and Alice agreed with me, and Esme sided with Carlisle.

"Carlisle talked Rosalie out of it, while Alice talked to Jasper. But unfortunately, no human gives birth to a hybrid and lives. Nessie's mother was no exception," I stated gravely.

"Then why'd you two have Nessie?" Noah asked in shock as he absorbed this news.

"Well, we did not know that our species could interbreed; it was an accident. It was only later that we learned of other human hybrids. Nessie's mother refused to terminate the pregnancy and it did not matter how I begged, because she wanted to keep the baby, and so I lost her. But now I have Nessie and I found Bella not long after, so I guess everything worked out in the end."

"Where's Nessie now?" he asked me.

"Back on the home planet with her husband," I lied. "The only other hybrids were also relocated there for their own safety, because our rulers were worried that the hybrids would reproduce and our two species would mix, if they were allowed to stay here."

"Aren't they concerned with the hybrids reproducing on the home planet then?"

"All of the hybrids have been forced to choose other hybrid mates, and so far, none of the hybrid couples have produced offspring. It might be because they are still young, or they might be infertile."

"And you weren't upset that your daughter was forced to marry another hybrid?"

"Yes and no. I was upset when I was first told this when she was a baby. But by some twist of fate, she fell in love with one of the other hybrids without being forced, and that did not upset me. By then I had come to know this other hybrid and I knew that he was a good man who would treat her right."

"So why'd Carlisle and Esme adopt Zakaira and Zikare?" Noah asked another of the many questions he had regarding our family.

"Esme and Rosalie have always been fascinated by human babies and wanted one. Our offspring are less dependent and more work. You remember what Allison and Jackson were like when they were still here, right? And they are still babies after all these years!

"Also, we wanted to help the humans. They would have died of AIDs if we had not intervened."

"So, everyone was in agreement with Zakaira and Zikare? Everyone wanted to save them?"

"Yes. And the same goes for all the other pet humans we have taken in over the years. They were all dying babies that no one else wanted."

"What about producing your own offspring? Wouldn't Mom and Rosalie rather have their own babies, like Alice and Jasper?"

"Well, Esme already has all of us. And we are all currently what you humans would call pregnant; even the males. But our offspring require two hundred years worth of development before they emerge. Eventually, Bella and I will leave you when our own offspring are ready."

"Even the males? You mean you're pregnant right now?" he asked with shock evident in his voice.

"Yes. Where did you think Allison came from? She is Jasper's."

"Oh, that's right. You said Dad fathered you without Mom. I guess that makes sense that biparental offspring can come from males just as uniparental ones can," Noah reasoned.

"So, have you figured out the motivation for your characters?" I asked.

"Yes, I think it'll be a human slash alien love story, but how many moons is the most romantic?" he asked thinking about what the alien world in his novel should look like.

"Four," I replied making up a number on the spot.

"Oh, and how many planets has your species infiltrated?" he asked wanting more background information for his story.

"You know I cannot answer that, but not many: it is very difficult to find a nearby planet with a host species of the correct specifications," I said thinking back to the time Emmett told the humans that the book, The Host, was basically a true account of our species.

The only exceptions Emmett mentions were that we did not want to take over the minds of all of the humans, but that we wanted to infiltrate a few of their kind to study them. Then he proceeded to act like he had told them some really profound secret that he was not supposed to tell and begged them to keep it quiet or he would be in trouble. And although this hypothesis posited that we were really three inch long silver parasitic worms, it had the added advantage of explaining why we looked like humans on the outside.

"Is that why you came here? To study us?" Noah asked.

"I was born here, remember? But for our species as a whole, yes. At first Carlisle wanted to study your species, but eventually he found a mate and wanted a family," I answered knowing that this lie was slightly different from the one Alice had told her humans. She had said that none of our kind had been born on this planet before, but over the years with Noah's incessant questioning, the lies have grown increasingly complex. The latest lie was that Allison and Jackson were the first biparental offspring of our kind to be born on this planet, but plenty of uniparental offspring had been.

"Why'd Dad make you before he found his mate?"

"He was lonely on this planet and did not think he would find the one for him. He was already older than I am now and most of our kind mate at a much younger age. He had the ability to make himself a son without a mate, so he took it."

"So you were his family when he was lonely on a strange planet?"

"Yes."

"And you and the others were all born here, on this planet, through your uniparental reproduction method?"

"Yes, except for Esme: she came from the home planet when I was still a boy. But she was also produced by only one parent."

"Why's the uniparental method so common? I mean if Mom and Dad are pregnant with biparental offspring, why'd they have the uniparental kind first?"

"Uniparental is faster and easier, because we do not go through the ridiculously long pregnancy and childhood. They would have had biparental children by now, but they had a miscarriage the first time around," I tried to put leaving your eggs on a shelf in terms a human could understand.

"That's really sad. But if your biparental daughter is already an adult, shouldn't Mom and Dad have a dozen offspring by now?"

"No, the biparental hybrids only have one alien parent, so they age just as fast as the uniparental offspring," I replied having gotten really good at making this alien stuff up on the fly.

"This is gonna make great material for my next book. Don't worry though, because I'll change enough of it so that others of your kind won't recognize it, but I want to write it down before I forget," he said pulling out his notebook and pen.

"Take your time, I need to check on Xavier anyway," I said standing up to leave.

"Oh, didn't you hear from my thoughts?" he asked thinking about the phone call from Xavier he received before I arrived. Xavier's teenagers all had after school activities tonight and his wife was out of town at a conference, so he was coming over just as soon as he fed his children dinner.

"You have to think a thought in order for me to be able to hear it," I replied as I heard Xavier's thoughts as he pulled up. Perfect timing.

"Oh sorry, guess I forgot to think that. Do you want to stay? He was gonna look over my latest chapter and then watch TV. But if you're staying, we could come up with something more interesting," he said thinking of all of the pranks he and Xavier had been dying to pull.

"I don't think Xavier's in the mood for that," I replied as Xavier's distressed thoughts grew nearer. I walked to the door and opened it before he had a chance to knock. "How is life today Xavier?"

"Hey, Edward, not good. Where's Noah?" he asked thinking that all he wanted to do tonight was kick back and chill with his brother, wishing he could drink like the other humans. A cold beer sounded really good to him right now, but we had ingrained the no drinking rule into him so deeply that he still had not touched the stuff.

"Right here. What's wrong?" Noah asked.

"It's Hallie: she has her first date tonight with this loser of a boy. That's why she's out of the house tonight," Xavier answered. Hallie was his youngest child and was only fourteen.

"And you let her go alone?" I asked incredulously.

"What could I do? She's growing up and is a teenager now: I had to let her go."

"Yes, but you did not have to let her go without following her. Where did she say she was going?" I asked.

"The movies."

"Well let's meet them there and supervise this date," I eagerly suggested.

"I don't want to be that type of a father. Besides, I let the first three go without stalking them," he replied.

"But I met all of their dates before they left. I have not met this one, so I have not heard his thoughts and do not know his intentions. At the very least, let us go to the theater and watch a different movie. While we are there, I will find this date and check him out. If he checks out, we will leave and she will not even know we were there," I reasoned.

"I don't want to spy on my daughter without her knowing. I always hated when you used to do that to me. We can go, but I'm gonna text her that I'll be in the same theater with the two of you, so she knows there's a chance that she might run into us," he said pulling out his phone and beginning to text.

"Just give me five minutes to get ready," Noah said putting away his notebook after finishing his notes on our earlier conversation.

An hour later we were at the theater debating which movie to see. I wanted to see the same one Hallie was seeing, but Xavier flat out refused, wishing to give his daughter some level of privacy. We eventually settled on an action movie, while I began to search for Hallie's thoughts.

I found her already seated for her own movie, so I looked at the humans on either side of her. I found the boy that was her date, and kept tuned in to his thoughts during the entire movie. The boy was also fourteen and seemed genuinely interested in Hallie. He was a typical teenage boy, with as much respect for women as any boy his age, but his intentions were not strictly honorable.

"That boy is expecting your daughter to put out before marriage," I informed Xavier as he tried to watch our movie.

"So? They're fourteen. None of my others were still virgins at that age," he replied.

"The other three were boys! Are you not the least bit concerned for your daughter's virtue?" I asked incredulously.

"Nope. Not unless my wife is, and she said that she didn't care if the kids fooled around," he replied. One of the reasons their marriage worked was because he did whatever his wife told him to.

"But you should stand up to her on this issue!" I insisted.

"This is your issue, not mine," he replied.

"Edward, brother, you need to give it a rest with this old fashioned values: they don't work for the kids of today. If Xavier tries to force your morals on his children, he'll just drive them away," Noah said, sticking up for his brother.

"Besides, they're my kids, not yours. You're free to impose your celibacy virtues on your own children, but leave mine out of it: I like my wife and I don't want to lose her because I have the most annoying brother in existence," Xavier replied sternly. Sometime during the past few decades he had grown up and had become an adult who stood up for himself instead of caving into everything I said. Most of the time it was gratifying to know that I had helped shape this person into a man, but other times, like right now, it was just annoying.

"Fine. But can I at least keep an eye on her for the next few years whenever they go out on dates?" I asked.

"No!" Xavier and Noah exclaimed in unison.

"Just sit back and watch the movie, Edward," Noah said clearly getting annoyed at my over protectiveness.

Maybe I was being a bit over-protective, but Hallie was my niece and out of Xavier and Noah's combined five children, she was the only girl. Maybe it was okay for boys to go out and behave like hooligans, but I wanted more for my niece. But she was Xavier's child, and I had to learn to let go: we could not protect or get attached to the children of our hosts, because we needed to sever contact after the hosts' deaths.

After the movie I dropped the boys back off at their respective homes and went home to Bella. She sympathized with me, but suggested I speak with Jasper and Alice and ask how they dealt with letting go. I knew Jasper had a really hard time with his over protectiveness towards his hosts, but he did not have the same problem when it came to their children.

In the end, it was Esme who helped me the most with this issue. Yet again, she provided me with motherly, or in this case, grandmotherly advice. Not only do you have to let your children go and make their own mistakes, but also you have to trust them to parent their own children. She was not at all concerned about her human granddaughter, because she trusted that she had raised Xavier right. And if Xavier had been raised right, then he would watch out for Hallie and she would be fine.

I did not like it, but I conceded. And it turned out that I was stressing over nothing, because Hallie broke up with that boy after only two weeks, with her virtue intact. And Xavier made much more of an effort to keep her dating life out of his thoughts, so as not to concern me. Plus I tried not to eavesdrop, so that I would not know what I should be over-reacting to. And I finally learned to let go and just let the humans be.


	21. Chapter 19

Ch. 19

Edward's POV-

Bella and I left Noah and Xavier with our remaining coven members in order to spend some time with Nessie. We had maintained a regular schedule of short visits, but had not had a longer visit since they moved to the Amazon in the first place. We had spent just shy of forty years with Noah and Xavier in this small town, because we had been here ever since we had been forced to move due to suspicions surrounding Nikolai and Larissa's TB. But we did not think we could stay forty years more without attracting attention, not with Rose, Emmett, Esme, and Carlisle around as well.

We also knew that very soon we too would have to travel north. Bella's shield was ninety-nine percent of our plans for Volturi evasion, so she would not be able to leave once we arrived. And Nessie would be suspicious if I visited without her mother, thus we would not have another chance to visit Nessie until Edward III and Elizabeth reached maturity. And with vampires needing approximately one hundred times as long as humans to mature, it would be a very long time indeed.

Nessie and Jacob had been in the Amazon with the rest of the pack for sixty years now, but it was still too soon to go back to La Push. Nessie and Jacob had left La Push one hundred years ago, but the rest of the pack only left sixty years ago, so they would need to wait at least another twenty years before going back.

Bella and I decided we would spend these last forty years with Nessie, while we still could. And when it was time for them to move back to La Push, we would go back to Forks. It had been one hundred forty years since we left and so no one would be left alive to remember us.

"Mom! Dad!" Nessie exclaimed as she greeted us at the airport. She was ecstatic to see us and gave Bella a hug, before jumping into my arms.

"Bella! Edward!" Jacob squeezed Bella just a bit too tight and gave me a proper handshake.

"How've you been? It's been far too long!" Bella exclaimed. She would have been crying tears of joy if that were possible.

"Great! What're you wearing, Mom?" Nessie asked referring to the T-shirt and sweat pants Bella had chosen for our journey.

"I thought we left the fashion police back in the States. What's wrong with what I'm wearing, Nessie?" Bella asked.

"Renesmee, you should not give your mother a hard time about what she is wearing: we are on vacation and she is allowed to relax," I defended my wife and her choice of attire.

"Alice called to warn me that Mom would go off the deep end without her and Rosalie there to dress her, but I had no idea it would be this bad," Nessie replied. "Please tell me you packed real clothes, and not just sweats?"

"Um, no. I was planning on enjoying my time away from the rest of the family. You've no idea how annoying being Rosalie's dress-up doll is," Bella answered.

"I think I do, Mom: I was her and Alice's guinea pig for the duration of my whole childhood, so I think I can relate to the desire to just wear jeans and a shirt, but sweats, Mom? Come on, we'll pick you up some decent clothes in the city before heading into the jungle.

"Sure, sure. But tell me about what I've missed since our last visit," Bella insisted.

"Well Zafrina and I are great friends and we have a welcome back party planned for you tonight!" Nessie exclaimed thinking that once again we would be meeting with Zafrina, the other hybrids, and the Quileutes, but not the other Amazonian vampires.

"And I can't wait to show you my latest killer robot! Embry and I've teamed up against Seth and Nahuel. We even added a marshmallow roaster! Well, I know you can't eat 'em anymore, but it's still fun to watch, right?" Jacob was talking a million miles an hour.

"Sure, Jake! When do I get to see?" Bella asked excitedly. Even if I could not read her mind, I knew from the excitement in her voice and the look on her face that she was looking forward to spending time with her best friend again.

"We're bringing them out for a battle during the party tonight," Jacob answered.

"Awesome!" Bella exclaimed as Jacob and Nessie led us first to their car and then through an epic-Brazilian-shopping trip rivaled only by one of Alice's. And finally they parked the car in a garage on the outskirts of the city and we ran with them, shopping bags and suitcases in hand, through the jungle to their home-tree.

We had a lot of fun as the Quileutes entertained us around the campfire and I especially enjoyed Zafrina and Nessie's stories. Nessie would talk, while Zafrina would fill our heads with matching pictures of the jungle. Then Zafrina would speak and Nessie would show us, one vampire at a time, of course.

And I found myself falling back into the easy friendship I had with Seth. We sat together catching up, while Bella chatted with Jacob, and Nessie was engrossed with Zafrina's pictures. But Seth and I did not have long to talk before Jacob interrupted announcing that it was time for the robot skirmish to begin. True to his word, Jacob, Embry, Seth, and Nahuel entertained us with an epic robot war: Jacob's bot really did roast marshmallows and the Quileutes insisted that they were tasty, but they did not look edible to me.

Jacob made up his mind to convince Nessie to try one, one way or another, as up until now she had always refused his human food: she would eat raw meat, but that was it. "Eat it for me? Please?" he begged using his puppy dog eyes.

"Fine," she acquiesced taking the nasty looking thing and popping it into her mouth. "Ew!" She spat it out and tried to remove the sticky substance from her lips. "That's the nastiest thing ever! I'm never trying any of your human food again, Jacob Black!"

"But you look so cute covered in marshmallows!" Jacob exclaimed kissing the marshmallow off of her lips.

"Get a room!" Embry crowed.

"Gross!" Seth chimed in.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and cleared my throat to remind him that her parents were present.

'Guess I'll finish this later tonight,' Jacob thought. He obviously was no longer accustomed to editing his thoughts.

"Ah-hem," I cleared my throat. "Bella? A little help?"

"Sure, Sure," she smiled at me and began shielding Nessie and Jacob from me. As Nessie's father, I did not want to know what went on in Jacob's head.

"Thanks, my love," I said kissing Bella's cheek.

"Mom! Dad! Gross! Save it for later, please?"

I chuckled replying, "Sure, Nessie. Anything for you."

They continued with the robot wars, but it had to be broken up when the marshmallow roaster caught the trees on fire. The Quileutes put the fire out before it could spread, but I was very upset with how irresponsible Jacob was being. "Nessie could have gotten injured in that fire! Do you know what would happen to Bella if she caught fire?" I scowled at Jacob.

"Calm down, Edward, it was an accident. No harm done," Bella tried to placate me.

"No more flame torches, I promise," Jacob tried to appease me.

"Good. I am trusting you to take care of Nessie. You need to be more responsible," I growled, still fuming.

"Sorry, man. Won't happen again," Jacob promised. I was not happy about it, but I let it go, for now. I would make sure that my daughter was safe before we left again.

After the fire was put out, the party wound down, and all the wolves and half vampires went to sleep, while Bella and I went for a hike in the jungle. She had seen this jungle many times before, mostly visiting Nessie, but there was something magical in the way the vines clung to the branches of the trees.

Bella was admiring some orchids and I was admiring Bella. She looked up at me and I stared into her butterscotch eyes. "What're you thinking about?" she asked.

"Mmm. How beautiful your eyes are in the moonlight," I replied, cupping her cheeks in my hands before kissing her lightly. Then I trailed my fingertips along her jaw, down her neck, and along her arm.

"Your eyes do sparkle nicely," she said tracing the shape of my lips.

I took her hand and silently led her up to the top of the thickest tree. We kept going until we reached the top of the canopy and broke free into the night air. Once there we jumped over to the tallest tree and held hands in the moonlight.

We stayed like that for a time, just listening to the chatter of the birds, the screech of the monkeys, and the rush of the wind. The animals instinctively knew to fear us and so had fled the immediate area, but we could still hear them from afar, because the jungle was dense with life and we could not be avoided indefinitely.

"What are you thinking about?" Bella asked me as I held her in my arms in that tree.

"I'm worried about Renesmee," I replied. "I know she is a grown woman and has been so for many years, but Jacob is far from responsible and all too soon we will be leaving her with him again. What if something happens? And next time we will not be able to come back for visits to check up on her."

"I know: I'll miss her too. Sometimes I feel like I'm being selfish bringing another child into this world when I already have such a perfect one right here," Bella said turning to look into my eyes.

"I know. Nessie is more than I ever dreamed of and I would not trade her for the world. And although she will be affected by our absence, we did not plan these two children. Our intentions were not to abandon our daughter for these babies, but now that they are coming…" I trailed off.

"I just can't bear to turn them away. To not love and protect them would be just as impossible as not loving our Nessie," Bella finished my sentence for me.

"Exactly," I replied. "And I feel like we have to choose them over Nessie in order to protect them from other vampires."

"But Nessie is grown and can take care of herself. She'll be fine and the moment that changes, we'll send for her and Jacob and make them come live with us in the Arctic. We'll be able to protect them both. We can have both. We don't have to choose," Bella insisted, her gaze boring deep into my eyes.

"But Alice cannot see them: how will we know they are okay?"

"Alice will see the Volturi disappearing and Nessie will call us if anything happens. She'll be fine," Bella assured me.

"Alice cannot watch everyone at once."

"But soon we'll have two psychics to watch out for our family," Bella replied. "Scryan will emerge only forty years after we leave Nessie. Surely she'll be safe for at least that long."

"I guess you are right, my love," I said leaning down for a kiss.

Bella and I stayed in our tree, just holding each other and kissing softly, until the moon set from the Brazilian sky.

"Are we still as bad as Emmett and Rosalie?" Bella asked at long last breaking the silence.

"There's only one way to find out," I answered leading her down through the trees. On the way I grabbed a vibrant orchid growing as an epiphyte midway down and tucked it behind Bella's left ear. Once on the ground again, I scooped her up and carried her through the ferns to our little tent in the jungle.

After a night to ourselves amongst the trees and ferns, Bella and I rejoined Nessie and the gang in the morning. We were off to hunt and if we were lucky we might even come across a jaguar, my favorite. The Quileutes were staying behind to eat human food, but the hybrids would be joining us. And now that we were here for a long-term visit, Zafrina brought all of the Amazonian vampires out to meet us.

Bella and I had already met Senna, Kachiri, and Huilen, but we had only heard about Jose and his three children, Fernando, Josue, and Uiara. Zafrina had told us Jose's story many times over the past forty years that we had been visiting Nessie here. A mated pair, who had noticed Jose while hunting in the jungle, turned him over two hundred years ago.

Jose was an expert tracker among the men of his tribe, using his almost supernatural tracking abilities to lead the hunt. The pair of vampires noticed him and his tracking ability and decided to change him, because a tracking talent would be beneficial to them. When Jose awoke after his change he was devastated, because he had had a wife and three children that he did not wish to be separated from.

Jose knew that as a newborn he could not go back to his family and even after the newborn years had passed, his children were not old enough to change. So he waited until his youngest, Fernando was a young man, before going back to his family. But his wife had thought he was dead and remarried, producing two children by another man and finally dying in childbirth years before his return.

Jose was heartbroken to learn of the death of his wife, so he clung to his children for support. He changed all three of them and wished to take them with him. But the oldest, Uiara, objected, for she was already married to a man named Thiago. They had no children, so Jose agreed to change him as well, but Thiago had had a baby brother, Enrique. When Enrique came of age, Thiago changed him, forming a loose coven of six.

A group of six allied nomads was probably a better description for these vampires, because they lived more like independent nomads than a coven. Uiara and Thiago generally went off on their own, while the four males, Jose, Fernando, Josue, and Enrique were solitary entities roaming throughout the jungle. It was only since meeting the three Amazonian sisters that the four found themselves together enough to be called a coven. Fernando was mated to Zafrina, Josue to Senna, and Enrique to Kachiri. And although the two covens had never merged, they always colocalized in the jungle.

After Zafrina and Huilen met in Forks, Zafrina introduced Jose to Huilen, and it was love at first sight. Both Huilen and Jose got the happily ever after they deserved and although I had never met Jose's coven, I had seen them in the thoughts of the others. I was particularly impressed by Jacob's thoughts of them, because he was so fond of the group, despite their vampiric nature, that he had forgiven them for not coming to our aid with Senna, Kachiri, and Zafrina when Alice and Jasper came to them after Nessie's birth.

Jacob accepted Jose's rationale that unlike Zafrina's coven, he and his coven had never met our coven, so there was no reason to think that they would agree to travel with their mates to help us. I always thought that this excuse was weak, becuase they should always travel with their mates to ensure their safety, but Jose's coven thought that Zafrina's coven could take care of themselves and were not aware of the severity of the danger.

I shared my concerns with Bella, but she insisted that I let it go while we stayed here, because we were guests in their forest, so that morning I cast my preconceptions aside and greeted both Zafrina and Jose's covens for our hunt. It was bound to be a precarious hunt anyway, not just due to the number of vampires participating, but also because of the various diets of those involved: there were both vegetarian and carnivorous vampires among our group.

Nahuel and Huilen were vegetarians, both having tried their first deer while staying with us in Forks after the standoff with the Volturi. Nahuel was fonder of the diet than Huilen, but they both agreed that the lifestyle was worth the sacrifice. The diet became a necessity a few days later when Nahuel met Leah. She imprinted on him, but he loved her too and he had been hooked ever since. There was no way he would have been able to stay in La Push with her for all those years otherwise.

Huilen had stayed with us until we left Forks, before moving back to her beloved jungle. Once she returned, she had run across Zafrina and been introduced to Jose. Jose was wary of Huilen's diet at first, but after a time, he tried it and liked the clarity of mind it offered: the blood lust being stronger on a human diet.

Jennifer and Maysun did not particularly like the idea of drinking animals, but after Seth and Embry imprinted, they fell in love and decided to try it. They found the diet easier to live with than they thought it would be. Being only half vampire made drinking animals easier and when they were done they could eat the meat as well. Waste not want not and all.

So Nahuel, Jennifer, Maysun, Huilen, and Jose were all strict vegetarians like myself, but Zafrina, Senna, Kachiri, and Fernando, all took much more convincing to try our ways. Huilen and Jose laid most of the groundwork, proving that they were perfectly normal despite the animal diet, but it was not until Nessie came to live with them that Zafrina agreed to try it, because she would do anything for Nessie. She found self-control difficult, but she was trying.

Often a local would wander into the wrong part of the forest and all of Zafrina's efforts would be for naught. The Quileutes did not mind her slip-ups so much, mostly because they were on her land. If they did not like it, they could go back to La Push.

After a few years even Senna, Kachiri, and Fernando tried vegetarianism. They were not committed to the lifestyle exclusively, but were sort of omnivores. They would hunt animals with Zafrina and would take any humans that crossed their path, which reduced the loss of human life substantially. Now they killed on average only five or six humans a year each.

Uiara and Thiago were strictly carnivorous with no desire to change this status, so they always kept their distance from the Quileutes and hybrids and were not here today. Josue and Enrique had never before tried animal blood, but had decided to come with us today and see what it was like, so we would have to find something tasty for the neophytes in order to not scare them away.

I was a bit skeptical when Zafrina first informed me that we would all be hunting together, because I was wary of the Quileutes reaction to a slip in their presence. But Jacob assured me with his thoughts that he understood that we could not force our way of life upon other vampires, and that while on their land, we had no say in who or what they drank. Plus the Quileutes were staying behind and the others had all gone hunting together before, except for Josue and Enrique of course: they had all been living together for sixty years after all.

So that is how Bella and I found ourselves meeting both Jose and Zafrina's covens for a hunt. "Zafrina, where's the best hunting around here?" Bella asked with that smile I loved so much.

"Towards the river," Zafrina replied leading us off in the direction of the river. She was thinking about tracking the scent of a local pack of wild dogs let loose from the cities. The half vampires would not touch wolves or dogs, but they were delicious. So instead of leading us after the dogs, she was leading us to an area filled with capybara, tapir, and anteaters. There were also black caiman in the area, but they were disgusting.

I would rather have dog, but I knew Bella would never go for it. I could also tell that the other vampires preferred dog. "There are a lot of us here. Why don't we split up? Bella, you can go with Nessie, Nahuel, Jennifer, and Maysun, and I will go with Zafrina, Senna, Kachiri, Huilen, Jose, Fernando, Josue, and Enrique?" I suggested.

In the end, we all agreed to the plan, with Nahuel and Nessie leading the way among the hybrid group. Zafrina took the rest of the vampire group, including myself, off in the other direction, towards the wild dogs. We did manage to track down quite a few of them and decimated an entire pack or two. Enrique and Josue each caught a few and were not particularly fond of the taste, but agreed to drink it again on group hunts in the future: you cannot change ingrained habits in one day. After the last of the dogs was drained, we headed back towards the others. And I took down a rhea on the way, but I am not a big fan of bird and I do not think I will try that one again.

Bella and I spent the next twenty years in a similar fashion with Nessie and the others while we reacquainted ourselves. Sure we knew what our daughter's life was like from our frequent visits and phone calls, but hearing about it and living it with her were two different things. Bella and I grew to know Zafrina and her extended coven like they were our own family. Their trials and struggles became our own, and so Bella and I became very active in the rainforest preservation movement.

Nessie, Jacob, and the rest of the Quileutes and hybrids had spent their free time in the Amazon helping Zafrina and Jose's Covens combat rainforest destruction. The Brazilian rainforest had been depleted to a critical minimum, and if further destructive activities were not abolished completely, the mass extinction event that our planet was currently in the grips of would take an irrevocable turn for the worst. As one of the few remaining hotspots of biodiversity, this rainforest was home to a significant fraction of severely endangered species and provided for a large fraction of the Earth's oxygen. If the ecosystem here failed, life as we knew it would fail too.

Some species would survive the mass extinction that loomed on the horizon. The generalists like the pigeon, the rat, the cockroach, and the human would likely survive. But all of the beauty would be drained from this planet when over ninety-nine percent of its species went extinct. And the cure for many diseases, such as New AIDs and New SARS, could be found in plant species that would soon be lost.

New AIDs was the new retroviral immunodeficiency disease that had recently sprung up in Eastern Africa as a result from a cross between a multi-anti-retro-viral resistant strain of HIV and wild SIV. New SARS was a new coronavirus that had been transferred from North American Bison to house mice, and then to humans, creating a respiratory pandemic. They were both bad news and scientists were having a hard time developing a vaccine or cure for both. And Alice could see that the cures for each would be found in the Brazilian rainforest, but both cures were still so far off into the future that Alice could not see which species they would come from. The only solution was to preserve the entire ecosystem so that one day the cure could be found.

Preserving the entire ecosystem was just what Nessie and the rest of the gang was up to in the Amazon. Nessie was involved in everything from backing environmentally friendly local politicians, to using our immense wealth to turn large sections of rainforest into nature preserves, to sabotaging logging and clear-cutting operations, to scaring away individuals from the city who were exploiting the forest, trying to make a quick buck.

And the presence of the Quileutes meant that Zafrina could expand their preservation endeavors to include the indigenous humans in the area, which was something that was never before possible. The few remaining Brazilian tribes were so superstitious of the vampires that the two groups were not able to work together to achieve a common goal: the preservation of the rainforest. But the wolves were human enough to be able to walk right up to these humans and forge a treaty.

The indigenous people agreed to help in any way they could, because this was their land. They were the ones responsible for teaching the next generation of humans how to respect the land and live in balance with nature. They were the ones who had to police the hunting of endangered species for food. They were the ones who had to convince their citizens not to burn the trees in order to make room for farmland.

And in return for their help, we gave the indigenous people knowledge, passed down from Allison, on how to better meet their needs with minimal impact on the environment. We gave them small solar panels and showed them how to mount them inconspicuously on the branches of the tallest trees to power their cell phones and laptops. And we gave them stocks and stock tips and showed them how to invest, so that they could use the money to import corn, rice, beef, and chicken grown elsewhere, so that they would not need farmland.

We even showed them how to make a new shade of purple dye with which to color their wool blankets, but Bella and I contributed one thing to the cause that no one else could: during the twenty years we were there we managed to genetically engineer alpacas to have a longer, softer, stronger coat and to survive in the rainforest, not just the mountains. We gave a heard of these beasts to the local Chief during a tribal meeting called to celebrate their pact with the wolves. The wolves had brought their hybrid mates to these meetings in the past, but never before had a vampire been allowed on these sacred soils.

Not only was our Alpaca gift appreciated in that it would allow the locals to produce a superior animal fiber for both personal use and sell around the world, but it also broke new ground with vampire slash human relations in the area. I hoped that with the acceptance of this gift, the natives would allow Huilen to stand in for Jacob in their treaty.

In our gift, the humans saw what vampires could do for them and that not all of us were bad. And this burgeoning trust would become extremely important in the near future when the Quileutes and the hybrids go back to La Push, leaving just the vampires to guard the rainforest and its peoples. Either the humans would very quickly learn to collaborate with Huilen, or all of the recent gains in rainforest conservation would very soon be lost.


	22. Chapter 20

Edward's POV:

Bella and I spent twenty years in the Amazon with Nessie and the others before we moved back to Forks and the hybrids moved back to La Push. While we were away, we tried to visit Carlisle and the rest of the family at least once a year. This year was the eightieth anniversary of Noah and Xavier's implantation, so Bella and I decided to make a detour to visit them before settling in with Nessie.

Our entire family moved about ten years back, because Emmett working at a high school turned out to be a bad idea. For the third time in his life, Emmett had come across a singer: he was a new student, arriving early to class on his first day. There was only one other student in the classroom and he did not last long. Emmett cleaned up the mess before his other students came in, but the rumors still spread. Both students were in his class and they had both attended their previous classes, only to disappear in the middle of the school day and their bodies were never found.

The whole family, including the humans and their human families had to relocate. They waited until the search died down and left a few at a time, so as not to cause a stir. Emmett and Rosalie went first, Esme and Carlisle last, with the humans in-between. This time Emmett was working with Rosalie and Nikolai at their repair shop, where the temptation was less. Hopefully he will not make that mistake again.

When Bella and I arrived at the new estate, we called Xavier and Noah to the main house and gave them the same spiel Zakaira and Zikare had been given. We left out the word vampire, but gave them enough of the details for them to understand that their time was both limited and running short. The news was not a shock to them, because they had known we were odd and were sure that we were aliens. They also knew that we had cured their leukemia and Menkes disease. So although they were upset over the revelation that they were each carrying our parasitic offspring, they understood.

Noah was okay with his impending death and that he was carrying Bella's egg. I had told him that Bella and myself were expecting, after all, so he was only mildly surprised. And he knew that he would have died over seventy years ago if it had not been for our intervention. He was happy with the way his life had turned out, because he loved his son and three grandchildren. And thanks to our money, which had paid for the genetic screening, they were all Menkes free.

Xavier did not take it nearly as well. He had four grown children and a wife he did not want to leave, not to mention seven grandchildren. His health was excellent, as was his wife's, and he wanted it to stay that way. He wanted to spend the rest of his old age with his wife and grandchildren. People were living longer now: one hundred forty seven was the current record. But Xavier would have to deal with his eminent death, because there was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of us could do now.

After our visit with our pet humans was complete, Bella and I moved back into our cottage, which was our first home. Forks had changed, but not much. Everyone we knew was long dead, but their descendants now inhabited the town. Layla Newton owned Newton's sporting goods. Cheryl Gerandy was a cashier at the market. Max Stanley worked at the bank. Justin Weber was the Chief of Police. Sarah Yorkie was a teacher at the high school… the town was the same just with new humans in it.

Bella and I spent some time repairing the old cottage and the main house. We filled our days with hikes in the forest and visited our old meadow. We even stopped by Charlie's old place, which Bella had sold when her dad died of Alzheimer's in two thousand forty-one. A nice young couple lived there now.

But mostly we spent our time down in La Push. Ever since Jacob and Nessie's wedding, the Cullens were allowed in La Push. We still always had a werewolf escort or five, of course, but we could go skip stones at First Beach, or cliff dive, or ride our motorcycles down the dirt roads. Jacob had introduced Nessie to all of these activities when she came of age and now that we were all back, we decided to do them together.

Today Bella and I met Nessie, Jacob, Seth and Jennifer down at first beach for a day of surfing. Nessie and the rest of the gang had taken up the sport when she was a teenager; she used to come down here every weekend to surf with Jacob. Vampires have the advantage in the water, so Bella and I had picked it up quickly on the few occasions we had participated.

After a few hours of riding the waves, Nessie and Jennifer put down their boards and walked over to the tide pools. Bella and Jacob were still going strong, trying to see who could catch the largest wave. And while my wife spent time with her best friend, I spent time with one of mine, Seth. We stayed towards the shore within sight of Nessie and Jennifer.

Something I had seen in Seth's thoughts earlier was on my mind, so I decided to ask him about it. I had seen that although Seth was happy to be back home, he was sad that everyone he knew had grown old without him. Almost everyone he had grown up with was dead, even Collin and Brady, who had long ago given up phasing. And the grandchildren of his friends were now elderly themselves.

But what really stuck out among his thoughts was the memory of when he had first returned to La Push with the rest of the pack. Rachelle, Rachel and Paul's three-year-old great great great granddaughter, had run up to her returned chief, slash great uncle Jacob, and given him a hug. Seth was still thinking about how sad it was that none of the Clearwater children had produced offspring, because there were no descendants of his running up for hugs upon his return.

"So are you and Jennifer never going to have children then?" I asked interrupting his thoughts.

'I want them: you know from my thoughts that I do. But we all agreed, Jacob, Embry, and myself, that as long as Leah couldn't have them, we wouldn't have them either. Pack solidarity: we need to stick together. She's my sister and it kills me to think how much it'd hurt her to see us bringing forth children while she has none,' he replied in his thoughts.

"That is very kind of you Seth. But sometimes you have to think about what is best for you, even if it will hurt your sister. Besides, I'm sure that having nephews and nieces running around would please Leah very much, because it's the next best thing to having children of your own."

'I think Jen would make a wonderful mother, but we have eternity together, so I don't mind waiting a little more. Maybe, with time, Leah'll come to me asking for nieces and nephews. Maybe one day she'll be ready to see me happy, but I still see that pain in her eyes every day, so I can't do that to her now. Besides, I don't even know if we _can _have children, because I've been taking birth control pills this whole time,' he thought.

This last piece of information I already knew, because Jacob and Embry were doing the same. All three couples had agreed not to try for children, and as all three women were half vampire hybrids, they did not know if human birth control would work for them. The three men, on the other hand, were part shape-shifter, but already knew that they were human enough.

So when the first hormonal birth control pills for men became available back in two thousand fifteen, Seth, Jacob, and Embry all asked me for a prescription. I agreed and even tested their sperm count, before and afterwards, to make sure the pills worked. Mostly I was curious as to how the medication would interact with their atypical bodies, because their increased body temperature might affect the effectivity of the hormones. But my tests showed that there were no complications and the birth control pills worked just as well on wolves as on humans.

And since all three couples had been on birth control this entire time, there was no way of knowing if they were fertile or not. 'Leah and Nahuel aren't fertile, that's for sure," Seth thought. 'They've never used birth control and have never been pregnant. Same thing with Serena and Robert.'

Although I had never met Serena or her mate Robert, I knew that she was Nahuel's oldest sister, and she was the only hybrid who had chosen a full-fledged vampire as a mate. I knew Nahuel visited her from time to time, but she and her mate were nomads who spent most of their time in her native Norway, free from the confines of a coven. And although the two had been together for well over a hundred years, they had yet to produce offspring, lending credence to Seth's fear that the hybrid vampires were not fertile.

I refused to contemplate the implications that this train of thought had on my prospects for being a grandfather: if the other hybrids were infertile, then Nessie would be so too. Instead I resolved to ask Allison to clarify this issue for me and wait until then to process my feelings on the matter. So I nodded to Seth and then preceded to change the subject by asking what else had changed since we left.

Seth told me that Sam Uley had stopped shifting in order to die with his Emily, his true love and most of the wolves from back then were long dead as well. I knew that the exceptions to this all belonged to Jacob's pack. Jacob's Quil, Quil the fifth, had died not long after Claire, but the other three wolves had decided to keep phasing in order to live as long as their half vampire mates.

There were plenty of new young wolves when Seth and the rest of the pack had moved to the Amazon eighty years ago. Quil the tenth was the pack leader back then, and acting chief in Jacob's absence. Quil the tenth was still alive, but he had long since stopped shifting. His pack was down to three old men, including Quil, and there had not been a new wolf since the half vampires' departure eighty years ago.

I was sure our presence now would change that, because two vampires and four half vampires would make for a wolf population explosion, but for now La Push was relatively wolf free. So this meant more patrols for Seth and his fellow pack members, which he was happy to do, as patrolling made him feel useful again. The remaining wolves of Quil's pack were all much too old to patrol.

So Seth and the rest of Jacob's pack fell right back into their old role of protectors, just as they fell back into their places in their community. Leah, Seth, Jennifer, and Nahuel had all moved back into the Clearwater family home. Jacob took over as chief again, moving into his father's old house with Nessie. Embry and Maysun moved back into Embry's mother's house. And they all fit in so seamlessly that the ignorant majority of the tribe did not question their presence, because only the elders knew the truth of their origins and their real ages.

After an afternoon of surfing, Bella and I attended a huge bonfire, slash tribal council meeting, in honor of the returned Quileute Chief. The Quileute elders sat around the fire while Jacob spoke of his plans for the tribe. Now that he had returned, he was going to lead his people, and those of their allies, to reclaim what once was theirs. He planned on taking his case before the Supreme Court in order to have the Quileutes and the Makahs granted independence: to be their own nation.

Thanks to Alice's investment tips, the tribe had come in to quite a sum of money in the past few decades. They had already used that money to buy up all the land in between here and the Makah reservation. The entire town of Forks was also subject to this land-grab and because the inhabitants were having a rough time with the economy, almost all of the residents had agreed to sell. The few who had not sold, had died years ago, and upon their deaths, their land was also purchased. The one exception being our family and we still owned our property near Forks. But Forks and the surrounding area had not been altered by the change in owner-ship, because the Quileutes had graciously allowed the old inhabitants to rent their property back.

And since the entire northern tip of the peninsula was owned by the Quileutes or the Makahs, Jacob was going to lead his people in succession from the United States. It was unprecedented, because no tribe had been granted such freedoms in hundreds of years. But it was a move that needed to be made, because the United States was rapidly declining and Jacob did not want his people trapped in the resulting cesspool.

Alice had seen that the United States would fail completely in about two hundred more years. The failure would be followed by civil anarchy and then its reformation under the same name. But it was already going downhill and the Quileutes did not want to be around for the chaos. Instead they wanted to establish their own society free from failing big brother before it was too late.

The United States was failing for three main reasons. First, they had destroyed all of their wildlife and natural habitat, meaning they were in a state of ecosystem collapse. It was a recoverable collapse, but it was not helping. Second, all of the jobs had been shipped off to India and China, which were the current world leaders. And third, the national deficit was just outrageous, because the country had attempted to continue to maintain a first world life-style as is slipped into a second world economy.

So the Quileutes wanted freedom and they had the three things they would need to get it: land, money, and a legal strategy. They had the land, and having ownership of the land would smooth along the process. They had the money, which would pay for the legal fees and lawyers, and had already paid for the land. And Alice had sent a legal strategy, which the lawyers would execute, given the money.

Alice could see the succession working, given enough time; it would just take about fifty years of court battles and then the Quileutes and Makahs would be free. This would set the stage for other tribes to carve their own little counties from the falling giant. And when the giant fell, these pockets would remain free of corruption and be integral in putting the new United States together by incorporating lawless territory. The new United States would be more of an amalgamation of these new smaller countries, which cooperated like the European Union. Was it better than the old system? Probably not, but it would decrease the amount of time the country spent in upheaval ten-fold. And as vampires, we had to let the humans fail around us and try not to get involved.

So Jacob shared his plans for the future with his people and afterwards the elders told of their past. They told the legends of their tribe, which I heard for the first time that night. Old Quil sounded quite majestic when he spoke, like some long forgotten legend, still alive after all these years.

"There was a time when the gods lived and walked upon the Earth side by side with mortal man," Quil began. "These gods were of many forms: from the mighty eagle flying high in the sky, to the strong bear growling in the forest, to the cunning snake slithering in the desert, to the steady salmon swimming in the stream. These gods could take the form of men and walk and live amongst the people, but they didn't often do so.

"They swam in the streams, slithered in the desert, roamed the forest, and flew in the skies, taking no notice of the men walking the ground. This was until the beautiful goddess Kuruk, a bear goddess, was walking in the forest, looking for a patch of berries, when she came across a man. This man was so beautiful and strong that the goddess fell in love with him right there and it was like there was nothing else in the world, only him.

"Kuruk took this human for her mate, taking her human form to be with him. Now she had borne many children in her bear form and they had all been gods and goddesses like their mother, but when she mated with this human, she made a hybrid that was part god and part mortal.

"When her many hybrid children came of age, they found that they had special powers from their mother. They grew strong and fast, like a bear, but healed quickly and did not age, like a god. Their skin ran hot as fire and they found that they could take the shape of the wind. They could leave their bodies and their spirits could soar on the wind.

"But they could also return to their bodies and live as mortal men and they found that if they stopped leaving their bodies in spirit form, they could age. When they grew weary of their human forms, they would allow themselves to age, in order that their spirits could forever leave this world and rejoin that of their mother, for their mother had left this world when her human husband had died," Quil the eighth finished his legend before starting on the tales of The Spirit Warriors and The Third Wife.

I had heard the tale of The Third wife before, from Jacob back when Bella was still human, so as it was told, my mind wandered. I would have to remember to ask Jackson if these stories were true and if this was really how magic had come to the Quileutes.

Once the decision to ask was made, it did not take Alice long to text me back an answer. "The Quileutes were indeed descended from hybrid shape-shifters, but the tribal stories were inaccurate in that they thought there was also spirit warrior in their ancestry. Their ancestors had an alliance with the spirit warriors, but weren't descended from them.

"The Quileute spirit warriors were in fact hybrid shape-shifters that took the form of katydids: they were so small and they had wings, so they felt like their spirits were flying on the wind. Taha Aki's tale of betrayal by Utlapa was completely fictional, and Taha Aki was simply the first wolf in a line of katydids. A switch, that according to Allison, was extremely rare, but could've happened to anyone. The tale of the third wife, however, was accurate."

I put away my cell phone with a smirk on my lips as I decided to never mention this to any of the Quileutes or risk being banned from their lands once more. I wondered why Alice had responded now, but not earlier with Seth. I decided that it was better that I waited to talk to Allison in person before getting an answer as to the fertility status of the hybrid vampires, because that was too personal for a text message. Maybe Alice knew this.

After the story, the humans and half vampires turned in for the night, and I put aside my worries for Nessie. I took Bella's hand and we went for a stroll along First Beach. Jacob watched from a distance, but gave us some privacy. He still would not leave two vampires unguarded on his Reservation.

"Care to go for a swim in the moonlight?" I asked the most gorgeous woman I have ever met.

"Where to?" Bella asked me.

"North to Neah Bay. We can catch the beach east of the Makah reservation, and run home to Forks."

"That sounds lovely. See you tomorrow, Jacob," she called waving at Jacob. He was close enough that he overheard our plans and waved back.

And with that, Bella and I waded into the water. I was looking at the way Bella's hair caught the moonlight and she still took my breath away, even after all these years. She looked up at me, and her deep gold eyes dazzled me. I kissed her soft granite lips and whispered, "Let us go home."

We made our way home long before the sun rose, so we shared a shower before preparing for the new day. I was going back to Forks hospital as my own grandson, Edward Cullen the fourth, to apply for a job. The hospital would still have my father's name on record and the townsfolk would know that we were living in his old house, so Bella and I would say that we were his descendants who had inherited the house.

But it was still the middle of the night and I had preparations to make. If I was going to be around human blood I would have to hunt before I went. Bella and I had just hunted last night, in preparation for our trip to La Push, so I went alone and took down a few deer.

When I came back home, I found Bella in Nessie's old room. We had left it the way it had been when last we lived in this cottage; Nessie was only one year old when we left. We did not go far, so that Nessie and Bella could keep in touch with Charlie, but we had to leave Forks to avoid the growing suspicions following the Volturi's visit. Plus, Nessie was just growing too quickly to allow us to stay in one place for long.

Nessie was about the size of a seven year old when we lived here last, so her room was that of a little girl: all pink flowers and lace. Bella had pulled out a tub of Nessie's old baby clothes from the closet, where we had left them when we moved away. She held up a tiny pink nightgown and asked, "Remember when Nessie was this little?"

"Yes, my love: she was the most adorable baby ever in existence," I replied walking up behind her and wrapping my arms around her.

"Allison and Jackson were never this small."

"Yes, but they stay little for longer: they will still be toddlers when we travel north to meet Alice and Jasper," I reminded her, kissing behind her ear.

"Alice said that they'd be walking soon: she saw it in a vision," Bella said placing her hands over mine, and turning her head towards me.

"Yes. Their legs are straightening out and then they will walk and Alice and Jasper will wish for the days when their children sat still. What is really on your mind my love?"

The babies emerged with stiff legs stuck in the fetal position from spending so many years trapped inside such small eggs. They would not be able to walk until their legs straightened out.

"It'll be us with two new babies in just twenty years. We've done this before, but everything was different with Nessie because she was a hybrid. I feel like everything will be new again."

"It will be new, but we will manage. You were a wonderful caring mother to Nessie and you will be the same for Elizabeth and Edward the third," I replied kissing along her jaw.

"Masen."

"Hmm?" I asked nibbling on her ear.

"Edward the third is too long of a name: I've decided to call him Masen. His full name is Edward Anthony Masen Cullen the Third…"

"It's perfect," I replied turning her around so that I could look into her eyes. "Thank you for naming him after my human father: that is very sweet of you."

"It just seemed to fit the boy I saw in the new sketch Alice emailed me. I looked at it on the laptop while you were hunting and he just looks like a Masen," she said before softly kissing my lower lip.

"Can I see?" I asked scooting us towards the laptop that was open on Nessie's childhood bed.

"Of course," she answered as I sat down and pulled her onto my lap.

Bella picked up the laptop and showed me the scan of Alice's sketch. It featured two children, a boy and a girl, about the same size Jackson and Allison had been when they left with Alice, but these were our babies. Elizabeth was wrapped up in my arms as I kissed her forehead and Bella was by my side holding and tickling Masen.

"He does look like a Masen. I think I will call Elizabeth Eliza for a nickname. My mom was always Liz, so I don't want to use it," I said.

"Eliza sounds very elegant. She even looks like an Eliza," Bella replied.

"We look so happy," I stated looking at the sketch on the screen.

"I think we'll be very happy. It may just be the four of us in the Arctic in the beginning, but eventually Nessie will join us and our family will be complete."

"I do envy Alice her visions: to be able to see our children now, before they are born, anytime I wished would be better than reading minds."

"Can't you hear their thoughts like you did with Jackson and Allison?" Bella asked.

I had been able to hear the thoughts of Alice and Jasper's unhatched little leaches starting around seventy years into the parasitism. At first the thoughts were slow, nondescript, and far between. But as it grew closer to the time of their emergence, their thoughts grew in number and complexity, just as Nessie's had done when she was inside Bella.

"No, my love: I could hear neither of them when we went to visit Noah and Xavier. They both have shields, remember?"

"Yes. I was just hoping that their shields wouldn't be manifesting right away. It's going to be much harder to know what they want and need before they can speak if you can't read their thoughts…" Bella trailed off. I could tell from the look on her face that she was thinking of how much we had relied on my mind-reading and Nessie's pictures when she was little.

"We will be just like any couple in that respect and we will learn to cope with their silent minds," I assured her putting down the laptop.

"I'm sure we will. But still, it must be nice to be Alice and be able to see that everything will work out. I bet she never had any doubts," she said lacing her fingers with my own.

"Even Alice has had a crisis of indecision," I comforted her, trying to decide just how much to reveal, because I hated telling the secrets I glean from the minds of my family members. Bella raised her eyebrow at me in disbelief, so I continued, "The first time she and Jasper watched Zakaira and Zikare alone. Alice had no experience with human babies and felt way out of her league."

"But she could scry them and knew that they'd be fine," Bella insisted.

"All she saw was them pooping. Twin babies means twin dirty diapers. And for someone who has never defecated herself, it was a bit over whelming," I said, not even mentioning the incident when Nessie was little.

Vampires do not excrete waste, because we drink blood. Our bodies digest the blood completely, without producing fecal material, but Nessie was a hybrid, so she could drink blood and eat human food. When she was younger, she was on an all blood diet, despite Carlisle's insistence that she try formula. But when she tried human food for the first time, not long after the Volturi's visit, she had to go.

Alice could not scry Nessie, so she had no way of knowing what was going to happen. And Nessie was not even six months old yet, even though she looked closer to five years, and had no experience with defecation. So long story short, there was a big mess and Alice had freaked out, taking off with Jasper and not returning for over a month. I did not blame her, because she had been the one holding Nessie, trying to dress her, when it happened.

And all Alice could think of when faced with the human twins' dirty diapers was the horror she had felt after that day with Nessie. If it meant a year or more of changing diapers, Alice did not know if she would be able to go through with the whole raising hosts thing. And I knew that if vampiric babies pooped, that would be a deal breaker for Alice, because she would have washed off her egg and set it on a shelf to dry and instructed Jasper to do the same with his stone.

So that day when Alice and Jasper had been watching their pets for the first time, Alice's will had wavered, and the future she saw actually shifted to show only Zakaira surviving, with Zikare having suffered death at her own hands. But thankfully Jasper sensed the turmoil that was afflicting his wife and intervened. Not only did he take care of both humans that day, so that Alice would not have to, but also he promised her that he would continue to do so until their own babies emerged. And if she still was not ready to help him, he would raise her egg along with his own, as a single father, if only she agreed not to do anything rash or harm his son.

And so for the second time that day, Alice saw the future flicker and change, but this time she saw Jasper as a single father raising all four babies himself. And amazingly enough, he did not resent her in that future. He did not ask for a divorce, he did not ask her to help him with the children in any way, or even to spend time with them.

He would show the children pictures of their mother and tell them how much he loved them. He would tell them that they had a mother and she loved them very much, even though she could not handle being with them at the time. He could not know the future, but he would not give up on his wife. No matter how long she stayed away, he would never give up hope that she would come back to him and their children and be their mother. It would be hard on him with four babies and only two hands, but our family would be there to lend an extra hand and a shoulder for support, and he would get through it. He would even ask our family to watch his children for him, while he spent time with his estranged wife.

But Jasper always put the children first in that future, leaving Alice mostly alone. She was not even with the rest of our family most of the time, because it was too painful for her to see us all with our children, while she forsook her own. And we would be too busy picking up her slack to spend time with her. So she would join up with Peter and Charlotte and live a nomadic lifestyle, traveling across the country and only visiting her husband once a year.

Alice could see no future without children. She could destroy her own eggs, against Jasper's wishes, but he would never allow her to harm his own, so there would be a minimum of two babies. And her odds of harming Zikare, before he was aware of her intentions, were very low, so even if she tried to eliminate the children, she still saw a future with three babies as most likely. Even a future where she gave him her second egg, allowing all four children to live, was more likely than a future with only two children.

There was no way for Alice to go back in time to before she had told Jasper that the stones were eggs and not have the children. And somehow she had not seen at the time that she would ever want to, nor would she be able to get around his guard and destroy the eggs, so the cat was already out of the bag, and she could not put it back. And the knowledge that he loved her enough to let her leave, if that was her choice, was enough to give her strength to tough it out.

So Alice stayed with him and the rest of our family, and tried not to freak out about having baby humans. The one thought she clung to, was Jasper's assurance that she could leave at any time if it all became too much for her. That he would stay and raise the children if she could not, because in the end, he would always be there for her and be what she needed him to be. If this meant being a single father of four, he would do it.

The details of her visions showing this future lay testament to exactly how severely Alice's mind had wavered and how thoroughly she had considered this alternative future. She saw the whole surrogate future right down to the shocked look on Charlotte's face when she would announce her split from Jasper due to her desire to hunt humans. She saw the incredulous look on Peter's face when she would insist that Jasper had stayed behind to hunt animals with our family.

Everyone knew that Jasper was only with our family for Alice's sake, so Peter would be very suspicious if Jasper stayed while Alice left. He would even insist on speaking with Jasper over the phone, to make sure that he was still alive, before he would agree to let Alice travel with him and his mate. But what most people, including Peter, did not know was that although Alice chose our family, she did so for Jasper.

Alice would have been happy with any number of covens, because all she wanted was a family. And Jasper would have been happy with any number of options in which he did not drink thinking human. One viable alterative for Jasper was to go to Australia and join a nomadic pair that exclusively drank brain damaged humans who were in comas, being kept alive by machines. And so Alice combined the two desires, to not drink thinking human and to have a family, and found our family at the intersection; it had nothing to do with respecting human life, and only slightly to do with enjoying our personalities.

And although Alice had begun to drink animal before she found Jasper, she had learned to value human life only after joining our family and she even began to embrace our values after awhile. She enjoyed the clarity of mind that accompanied an animal diet and the opportunity that our lifestyle afforded us in our ability to occupy a semi-permanent residence. But she missed the taste of human blood and would gladly take the chance to slake her thirst without violating our rules and disappointing our father. So if she left her husband here with us, she would join up with his friends and resume the human diet of her youth.

No one else besides Jasper and myself knew just how bad it had been for Alice, but we all agreed to give her time and help out with her humans as much as possible. It was not long before she calmed down and the future switched back to one in which she was by Jasper's side as he raised four vampiric children. And as time passed and she became more comfortable with the idea, the future changed again, to one where they were equals in raising their demonic spawn.

"Yes, I remember how it took Alice a few months to get used to having the humans around. She barely touched them for the first three months, but then she got used to them and everything has been fine ever since. She even started going with Esme to those Mommy and Me classes so that she could bond with them," Bella replied and I thought about how supportive Jasper had been, because he had gone to every one of those classes with her.

"Alice was more scared about taking care of the hosts than she let on," I replied.

"But that's understandable, because she's a vampire and was worried about hurting them. And human babies have a lot of needs that she wasn't accustomed to, but she never worried about her vampiric babies," Bella said squeezing my hand.

"Yes, she did, but Jasper told her that he would raise them himself if she could not do it," I replied lifting our hands and kissing the back of hers.

"I would have never guessed that he would turn out to be so paternal…normally the woman is the baby crazy spouse," she responded snuggling closer into me.

"Yes, but Jasper has human memories of his human siblings and of helping his mother with a new baby. We all miss our human lives in a way, including him," I stated knowing that Bella was unique among us in that she chose this life and did not miss her human one. "He just never dwelt on what he knew he could never have. But as soon as he had a chance at a human dream, he wanted it and held on to it every bit as much as Esme and Rosalie.

"Alice has no memory of being human, so she had no human wants and desires. She really was happy with just the two of them and was scared beyond belief by the changes her egg brought into her life," I finished before placing several soft kisses along her neck.

"I guess everyone, even psychics, worry over what the future will bring," Bella replied turning to capture my lips.

"Let us go outside and catch the sunrise," I said, as our lips broke apart.

Bella nodded and we ran together to the nearest east-facing precipice and awaited the sun and the new day it would bring. There were still five hours left before my meeting at the hospital…


	23. Chapter 21

Edward's POV:

We stayed in Forks near Nessie and Jacob for twenty years before we had to leave and that was the last time we saw our beloved daughter for several hundred years. We still could not explain what was going on, because that would put her in more danger, but we needed to let her know not to worry about us. So we said farewell and hugged her, and she seemed to understand subconsciously that she would not see us for a long time.

But despite the fact that we would not be able to see our daughter, we would still be able to talk to Nessie on the phone and email her regularly. If the Volturi were a little more modern we might worry about them tracing our calls and emails back to our hideout. But even if they did, Allison had been helping Jasper secure our lines of contact. With her knowledge of electronics and computers, we were pretty much un-traceable behind an impenetrable firewall.

Not that the Volturi had ever needed to use such methods to locate someone before, because they had Demetri. But we would have Bella, so they would not be able to find us, and might resort to more modern methods of tracing us, so we took this in mind and prepared for any eventuality, just in case.

I still worried that we were leaving Nessie in the eye of the storm. When the Volturi cannot find us, would they go looking for her? But she had Jacob's pack to protect her and the other half vampires were no joke either and that was in addition to the wolves in La Push. For the last twenty years every teenage male in La Push, and several females, had transformed. The current pack was huge! Many had already decided to stop transforming, but that was only because there was no threat. As soon as a threat appears, the wolves will be ready and Nessie will be safe; I was sure of it.

And so while Bella and I held on to the hope that Nessie would be safe in our absence, we went back home to the rest of our family. We went back to our hosts and guardianship responsibilities, except now Noah and Xavier were old men awaiting their deaths in the near future. We went back a full year before the hatching was to begin, because Carlisle called with the news that Noah was hearing voices.

Noah was carrying Masen, who was a telepath, and it was possible for our powers to manifest before hatching, so this development although unexpected, was not a total impossibility. Bella and I left Nessie earlier than we had planned and went straight to Noah, hoping to hear our son speak for ourselves. The first thing I asked, once the greetings were over was, "What did he say, Noah?"

"Well I was listening to the radio and changed the station because it was playing a horrible old song. And then I heard, 'Hey change it back! I like that song!' pop into my head out of nowhere. It was the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in all of my years!" he answered.

"What song did he like?" Bella asked enthusiastically.

"I was listening to an oldies station. You know, they play the songs from back in the day? But then they decided to go way back. I'm talking public domain old: truly ancient stuff," he replied before playing the song back in his head, 'I kinda wanna be more than friends.'

"Animal by Neon Trees," I supplied and then started singing the old classic in my head, thinking about tapping the tune out on the piano.

'I like that song,' I heard pop into Noah's head.

"What else do you like?" I asked the bulge in Noah's waist.

'I like that female vampire, but her mind's silent,' replied the little voice in Noah's head.

"Wh-wh-what vampire?" Noah asked backing away from us, beginning to fear for his life. "I thought you were aliens!"

"Calm down, Noah. Nothing has changed: we still aren't going to hurt you and we aren't vampires in the human sense of the word. We are an alien species that drinks blood, but only animal blood," I admitted trying to soothe him before he hurt himself in fear.

"What did Masen say?" Bella asked confused.

"He said he likes you, but you need to talk more because he cannot hear your mind," I answered before turning back to Noah and the terror racing through his mind.

"Is this a baby vampire inside of me?" he asked pressing his aging body against the wall.

"Yes. It is growing off of your blood, but it also saved you, remember? You would have died a hundred years ago if that baby was not curing you. And as soon as he leaves your body, your Menkes disease will come back and kill you instantly. We honestly thought it was best for you; otherwise we would not have picked you," I pleaded, working in bits of the truth as well as the lie we had told him before. He would not make it to see after the birth to die of his own disease, but would be drained dry by my son during the hatching process.

"Is he going to," he paused to take a deep breath of air and then gulped before proceeding, "suck my blood?" And then images of a baby biting his neck and drinking his blood filled his mind.

"No, Noah. He'll drink animals, just like the rest of us, when he comes out," Bella tried to reassure him.

'I like her,' popped into Noah's mind again.

"W-wh-why is the unborn vampire talking to me?" Noah asked, momentarily distracted from his fear of being sucked dry.

"He is a telepath, Noah. He could probably talk to me too if he tried. Bella, why don't you try talking to him: throw off your shield so he can hear you," I suggested, inching closer to the scared host.

"Masen, I'm your mommy," Bella said throwing her shield and letting images of her holding our son fill her mind. The images were mostly from Alice's sketches, but a few were ones Bella had imagined on her own; I was surprised to see one of her holding a human-looking version of Masen with red hair and green eyes.

'Mommy?' popped into Bella's mind, in the small little voice that had been in Noah's head.

'Yes, Masen, I'm Mommy. Now you're scaring Noah when you talk to him, so can you try talking to me or Daddy when you want something?' Bella thought.

And then the most glorious thing happened and I felt absolutely wonderful and I literally jumped for joy when I heard it. 'Daddy?' came the little voice from within my own head. I had heard the voice perfectly from within Noah and Bella's thoughts, but now he was in my head and the voice rang out with crystal clarity. This voice was like nothing I had ever heard before, because it was a mix between a vampire voice and a baby's voice, similar to how Nessie's had been when she first spoke. It was musical in its pitch, but even higher than a normal vampire's, and at the same time, it reminded me of my own voice.

"I heard him! I heard our son, Bella!" I exclaimed, darting back over to her and taking her in my arms for a hug, and all but forgetting the frightened human in the room.

Noah was thinking about scenarios where the baby vampire inside him killed him and then went on to drink from his son and grandchildren, when the voice spoke to him again, 'No, I don't wanna drink my son and grandchildren.'

"What do you mean, your son?" Noah asked confused and then the voice projected the sounds of Noah's son coming for a visit and referring to Noah as "Dad."

"Noah, he is part of you. He values your son just as much as you do, because he has been hearing your thoughts his entire life. He will not hurt your family any more than you would," I clarified.

"No, he has his own thoughts. I don't like that song and I don't like steak that much," Noah insisted.

'Can we have steak again today?' Masen asked Noah.

"Bella, he likes steak!" I exclaimed excitedly, thinking that this was very odd. And then the voice was in my head trying to explain the difference in taste of Noah's blood between when Noah ingested steak and when he ate salad. Basically it boiled down to steak being rich in nutrients, while salad was not. "Noah, he just means that there is more protein in steak. He needs the nutrients and you could probably get it from any meat."

"Well we do drink animals," Bella reasoned, letting her shield snap back into place. It was always hard for her to push away the shield for extended periods of time. "It's only natural that he'd need more meat."

'I like Harley. Can we see him again today?' Masen asked in Noah's head as Noah started thinking about his newest great grandson Harley. The boy was just two years old and beginning to talk in sentences.

"See, Noah, he really does like your family," I said inching closer to him again. "Why don't we sit down and talk about this some more."

"You really are gonna eat animals little one?" Noah asked his abdomen.

'Say yes, Masen. We really are only going to give you animal blood,' I thought hoping my son would listen.

'That's what Daddy says, but I'm not eating bird!' exclaimed Masen's little voice from within Noah's head again.

"Sorry, Noah, but birds really do have nasty tasting blood," I said chuckling at my son's comment.

'Play me the song?' Masen asked me.

"He wants to hear that song again," I said out loud, so that Bella and Noah could hear. "Maybe we could go into the den and play it?"

"I remember that was one of my favorite songs back when we first got married. We used to play it all of the time when Nessie was little," Bella replied.

"Masen would have been just an embryo forming into an egg back then. Maybe even just a zygote, but no more than a blastula," I said trying to calculate how far she was into her parity when that song was popular. "He definitely did not have ears though…"

"Maybe he heard using his gift," Bella suggested.

"Maybe," I replied before thinking, 'Masen, what is the earliest thing you can remember?'

'Watching the fireworks at Noah's birthday party.'

We had thrown Noah a giant birthday party for his seventieth birthday, complete with fireworks. Not only were we celebrating seventy years with our human, but also seventy years into the parasitism. At the seventy year mark, the baby vampire is completely formed and capable of growing independently from the host if the connection were to be severed prematurely.

"He only remembers back about thirty years, not the two hundred since that song was popular," I said. 'Masen, could you always hear thoughts? Since as long as you can remember?'

'Yes, Daddy.'

"But he was already hearing thoughts then. I guess we will never know when his mind-reading started manifesting," I continued.

"Noah, are you going to be okay with all of this?" Bella asked our human.

"Well it's a really big shock…" he started as he thought about everything he had learned today. "But in the end, nothing has changed. You drink animal blood, not alien food, and no one is gonna kill my son or grandchildren."

"Correct. But we may make you listen to more ancient music with us," Bella said pulling out her music player and downloading Masen's song.

"Maybe we could put headphones on Noah's belly," I suggested.

"That's a great idea!" Bella replied grabbing her ear buds and holding them to the human's stomach while she turned the song on.

The four of us spent the rest of the day listening to two hundred year-old music and feeding Noah meat and everything went back to normal. Well normal for us, with the exception that now we asked Masen to try not to speak to Noah and to wait until we were around to use his telepathy. Masen agreed, but he was only an unhatched fetus, so he failed often and would blurt out things like that he wanted steak again.

And so life continued on as the emergences of my children grew nearer. Eliza was born an entire month before Masen and we even let Noah watch. Xavier had not been happy about his fate and he even told the other hosts about the parasitism. We had a lot of explaining to do and Larissa tried to run off, but we tracked her down and convinced her to come back, and the other humans eventually came around as well.

Noah was extremely understanding of the situation and he even liked to hold Eliza. She was a happy baby, except for her propensity to bite. Like all vampiric babies, my daughter had the urge to bite and even bit herself on occasion. This urge was worse in her and we were constantly watching out for her teeth. But the most aggravating part about being a father was that I could not read her mind. It was like having another Bella around: so frustrating! She even looked just like Bella with the only difference being that Eliza's eyes were still red from Xavier's human blood and her hair was shorter and straighter, because it was still growing in. And she had my lips, of course.

Bella and I had grown much more attached to Noah, so the birth of Masen was a sadder occasion. Masen was a happy baby, and he looked just like me, except he had Bella's brown hair. I could not read Masen's mind either, but at least he could share his thoughts with me, like he had been doing ever since that day with Noah when we played those old songs for him.

But Masen's telepathy was not the same as being able to read his mind. I could only hear what he chose to share, and he could only project sounds, not sight, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. It just was not the same and I wondered if Masen and Eliza would ever be able to throw off their shields like Bella. Would I ever get to hear their thoughts? It seemed a cruel trick of fate to allow me to hear every thought but the ones I wanted to hear the most.

And although Alice and Jasper could not be there to witness the emergences in person, I knew Alice saw them in her visions. She even had a care package delivered with custom made nightgowns. Because of their stiff legs, baby vampires could not wear pajamas, but they were too big for human newborn clothing, which was a problem she and Jasper had become all too aware of with their own hatchlings, so Alice custom ordered larger versions of the human garment for our babies.

There were even custom wetsuits, parkas, and traditional Inuit amautis for our trip north in the care package. The wetsuits were similar to toddler wetsuits, but they zipped up along the legs, and were designed to be looser than normal, to make it easier for us to insert their stiff baby vampiric legs. The wetsuits would be needed on the last leg of our journey, when we would cross the sea to our Arctic island.

The majority of our journey, however, would be over land and frozen ice, which was where the parkas and amautis came in. The amautis were a matched set made of tan caribou skin. They looked like jackets with a large pocket for the baby in the back, across the shoulders, but they were both long like a dress. Bella's had beading along the hem, while mine was slightly more masculine with a fur lining.

There was a note from Jasper in with my amauti which read, "Yes, these things are for guys too," and he attached a picture of himself wearing one to prove his point. In the picture Allison was being carried on his back in the amauti, while he appeared to be building their house in the frozen Arctic. The ground was covered in snow and ice, but the baby looked toasty warm. Alice must have known that I would object to the dress and had put him up to sending the picture.

Bella and I would need all of these things for our journey to the Arctic. The journey consisted of a long trek north, because we ran much slower carrying the two babies on our backs. Plus we had to stop and hunt along the way, or the babies would starve. Sure we had bags of blood amongst our provisions, but we could not carry all the blood we would need, and preferred to leave our supplies for emergencies only.

So Bella and I ran north, just as Alice had seen. She had sent us a map depicting the safest route, which was not the shortest one, just the one that included the most dry land and the fewest rivers to jump. Even though this would be the easiest journey, it was not free from peril, because Bella and I traveled over frozen seas and jumped many a running stream.

We even came across a few islands that were just too far apart for Bella and myself to jump. Luckily Alice's maps came with instructions detailing from where to acquire a canoe. We did not need the canoe until we neared the end of our journey, so we made a detour in the Canadian province of Nunavut to purchase said canoe. And from then on, Bella and I put our supplies in the canoe, which we carried in our left hands, while carrying our children in the right.

And we continued along on our quest. Needless to say, several times along the way, Bella asked why we could not just helicopter in. Truthfully, we could have done so and saved ourselves a lot of trouble, but Alice did not see us doing so, and since we still relied heavily on her sight, we blindly followed her instructions, despite not having a good reason for doing so. Alice's rational that we did not leave our scent on a helicopter lost all validity when we were crossing the Baffin Bay via canoe. It was such a wide bay that I had to get out and swim in order to pull the canoe, with Bella and the two children inside, across the great distance.

We could only assume that we traveled this way in Alice's vision because of a reason that would make itself apparent some time in the future. But by the time Bella and I reached the final shore before we would have to dive into the sea, even this logic was wearing thin. We were extremely close to giving in and calling a helicopter to pick us up and deliver us to the interior of the island. But since we were already almost there, we pushed on and finished our journey the way Alice had seen.

This island was literally the most remote place on Earth in order to make it as hard as possible for the Volturi to find us. It was removed from all civilization, even that of the Inuit, who occupied islands just ten miles south of here. But not even the Inuit bothered to journey to this treacherous spit of land. The island was bordered on three sides by shear cliffs, but sloped not so gently to the ice-covered sea on the northern side. The house was set up on the southern side of the island, as far from the beach as possible.

The entrance was through an underwater cavern on the southern side of the island. We swam across a frigid sea, before diving down fifty feet to find the small entrance. This would have been easier if we were not each carrying a baby, having discarded the amautis for wetsuits, forcing us to swim one handed. Luckily, vampiric babies do not need to breathe, or we would have never made it.

At first the opening was rather narrow, and we had to crawl along. After half a mile the tunnel widened out so that we could swim. The tunnel rose steadily, and after another three miles, we reached the water's surface. There the tunnel opened up into a little cave, with a path leading to the interior of the island.

Vampiric babies do not need to breathe, but they do need to be kept above zero degrees Celsius, which was not an easy task up here, especially in the freezing water, which was why both babies were clad in wetsuits for the journey. The task of keeping them warm would still have been impossible if they had remained wet throughout the rest of the journey. Luckily, Alice was waiting for us.

"Could the entrance be any more remote Alice?" Bella asked sarcastically as we surfaced.

"I don't think so… Jasper wanted the tunnel to open at least a hundred feet down, because that would really make it impossible to follow our scent in. But Esme said that would make the total journey too long."

Alice had built a small fire to warm the cave and had dry clothes and towels for us. We dried off and changed while we continued our conversation.

Bella sighed as she rubbed Masen's hair dry with a towel and shared her thoughts with me, something she rarely did, 'And two hours in the freezing water isn't too long?'

Our total traveling time in the water had been just under two hours, which, according to Allison, was the maximum amount of time baby vampires could be exposed to the freezing water. After that, they would get too cold and stop developing. It was worse than dying, because they would be stuck forever as a baby like an immortal child.

"Alice, remind me again why we could not just helicopter ourselves in like we did with the supplies?" I finally voiced Bella's question that had been nagging at me for days.

"Because only the humans bring in supplies on the helicopter. We don't want our scent left on a helicopter for the Volturi to find," Alice insisted. Somehow this rationale made more sense coming from Alice when we were dry than coming from me when we were submerged in freezing water.

"And here, Eliza's going to start chewing on her own hand in thirty seconds," Alice informed me while offering me a wooden dowel that was one inch in diameter and four inches long. "Jazz and I give them to our monsters to chew on when they get that urge. They're soft, but it's better than letting them chew on their own flesh."

"Jackson still does that then?" I asked. Before Jasper and Alice had taken their children north, Jackson used to bite himself, but that was nothing compared to Eliza. Allison never did it because she knew it hurt, but she would still get the urge to bite and used to try to bite the adults instead. And since vampiric babies were venomous, unlike Nessie, these bites were excruciatingly painful.

"Jackson doesn't bite himself anymore and neither of them bites us now," Alice answered out loud before continuing in her head. 'But they still have that chewing urge, and have taken down quite a few chair legs. That's why Jazz and I perfected the stick chew toy. They're made out of maple, which is one of the hardest woods. We tried a lot of other woods, but they were all too soft.'

"But why does she do it?" I asked. "I've noticed that she does it more often than Masen."

"Jasper and I've been talking about that and we think it might be because of her talent, because it's stressful having to hear every thought everyone in the room has ever had. She's inundated with all of my new thoughts, because she's never met me. Let's get her to Jazz, so he can help calm her down," Alice answered.

Once we were dry and once again clad is winter attire, we set off again for the house. Alice and Jasper had spent the past sixty years finishing the main house and their own abode and the guesthouse had been completed before Alice joined Jasper, so our estate was half complete. Bella and I would be staying in the guesthouse until our own home was completed. The foundation for our house was already laid from when Esme, Emmett, and Jasper first broke ground sixty years previously, so it would not be too difficult for the four of us adults to finish our house before the next set of baby vampires arrived.

Alice led us to the main house where Jasper was waiting with Allison and Jackson, who had not grown much in the last sixty years, and they now looked to be about eighteen months old.

"Are they sleeping?" Bella asked Jasper when we entered and saw both babies lying down on the carpet with wooden dowels similar to the one Alice had given me for Eliza. Only these dowels were covered in teeth marks, disintegrating at the ends, and had clearly been used. Jackson's looked like it was about to snap in two at any moment.

"No, just on a timeout for biting the furniture," Jasper replied with a chuckle, thinking about all of the chairs that had been destroyed that way. Surprisingly, those were fresh dowels in his children's hands that he had just given them a minute ago at the start of their timeout. And now that I looked, Eliza's dowel was looking much the same.

Bella still looked shocked and confused, so I clarified, "Jasper is using his skill to make them lethargic so that they will rest and sit still while they think about why they are not supposed to be biting the furniture."

"Oh, does that work well then?" Bella asked.

"It does for me: it's the only break I get from the terror," Jasper replied releasing his lethargic hold upon his children and letting them up from their timeout. "Eliza's overwhelmed by all of the new people. Give her to me so I can calm her down."

I handed my daughter over and almost instantly the deluge of emotions Jasper felt coming off of her ceased; his power always was stronger with physical touch. Once Eliza was calmed down sufficiently, Bella and I left the kids with Jasper, while Alice gave us a tour of the estate and island.

The main house had all the typical requirements of a Cullen home. A large library, a huge living room, an office for Carlisle, one for Esme, and even a few bathrooms and a kitchen in case Nessie came to visit. The third floor, however, was set up as living quarters for Carlisle, Esme, Carlisle II, and Aiden. Their quarters were complete, but not decorated or furnished, because that would wait until Esme joined us.

The room we left Jasper in was set up as the nursery and was baby vampire proof… well as much as it was possible for anything to be baby vampire proof. It was on the first floor, just off the living room, and the walls and ground were reinforced with steal rods. Luckily, vampiric babies were not as strong as adults, so this should be sufficient to contain them.

After giving us a tour of the main house, Alice showed us her little house to the north, just far enough away so that noise and emotions would not travel. It was a modest two-story townhome with five bedrooms, a study, a living room, and a den. The entire attic had been made into a closest, in addition to the walk-in closet associated with and equal in size to each bedroom. Space had been saved in the floor plan by only including two bathrooms, and excluding the kitchen completely, while skimping on the dining room. The dining room was more of an arts and crafts room anyway, because it was set up with a pair of easels and lined with shelves of paint, not to mention the sewing machine on the dining room table.

Next Alice showed us the hunting grounds and I was impressed by the variety of hunting available, because there were plenty of delicious carnivores in the area. Polar bear caves could be found on the western side. Artic foxes could be found in dens on the eastern side, near the largest population of arctic hare. There were some less desirable herbivores as well, such as muskox and caribou.

There were also plenty of marine mammals available. Seals could be accessed through their holes on the northern side of the island, near the beach. We never went within five miles of the beach, to avoid leaving a scent trail into the island, but walruses would sometimes rest on the beach and occasionally come more than five miles inland. But mostly Alice and Jasper went out the southern tunnel to hunt. Walrus nesting grounds were located on a nearby island and several species of whale frequented the area, making for plenty of options. Whale is very tasty.

The entire estate was well planned out and there was even a helicopter-landing pad on the southern side, so that humans could bring supplies in for us. Alice already had supplies and way too much clothing shipped in and judging from her visions, she was planning on making Bella spend many hours going through baby clothes with her.

After the tour, Alice took us to see her lab in the basement of the main house. She and Allison had been working on making synthetic blood from human stem cells. Several types were grown and combined in exact ratios, preserving the pH, sugar, and osmotic potential of the blood. It took a while to perfect the recipe, but Alice was now mass-producing the blood in large vats. And since it was made from human blood stem cells, it tasted as good as human blood. It just had to be warmed up.

The disadvantages of human blood were even eliminated, not just the killing people part. Human blood contains several proteins, present in the supernatant as well as attached to the surface of the blood cells, which make us more savage when we drink it. Animal blood contains variants of these proteins that are milder on our system, allowing us vegetarians to be more civilized. Alice had modified the stem cells to express the animal variants, making the blood have the same effect as animal blood, and our eyes would stay golden.

"It really is the perfect food," Alice explained. "I've been putting it in sippy cups for Allison and Jackson for years now and it's cut feeding time by ninety percent. I have enough cooking up here for Eliza and Masen as well. I'm going to be hard pressed to expand the production to make enough for Carlisle II and Aiden though… at least I have twenty years left to work on it. One day though, I should be able to make enough for everyone, including adults, to drink."

"That's great, Alice!" I did not see the sport in drinking from a cup, but I wanted to support Alice's efforts. Besides, the blood would come in useful with the babies. "Do you think you could work on genetically engineering animals to substitute for human hosts?"

"That'd take a lot of germ-line modifications," Alice began sounding a lot like Allison. It must be rubbing off, although Alice always was a know-it-all. "Bella, maybe you could help me with that? The parasitic fetus requires quite a few human specific proteins. And the nutrient levels are all off. That many modifications are sure to cause autoimmune issues.

"We'd have to use animals with impaired immune systems and it'd be more difficult due to the risk of infection. But once the eggs are implanted the immune systems should become fully functional… that might be a bad thing and cause more autoimmune diseases. I'll have to talk to Allison about the possibilities," Alice babbled quickly, grabbing four bags of blood. "Speaking of whom, we ought to feed the little bloodsuckers." And with that, we went upstairs.

We found Jasper with Masen in one arm, Eliza in the other, and Jackson climbing on his back, tugging on his hair. Allison was the only one not demanding attention, as she was reading a textbook at his feet. Alice must have trained him well, because Jasper had already taken the liberty of removing Eliza and Masen's snow clothes and changing them into crisp clean lighter-weight nightgowns.

Alice, Bella, and I each retrieved our little monsters and sat down next to Jasper. Once his hands were free, he picked up his own monster and pulled his left ear out of his pocket. Good thing he had all that wavy blond hair to cover his ears, because Bella and I did not even notice his ear was missing. "Alice, can you reattached this for me?" he asked. "I want to make sure it's on straight."

"Sure, Jazz," Alice answered retrieving the ear.

"So Jackson still likes to bite your ear off then?" Bella asked as Alice licked and reattached the ear.

"Yeah," Jasper replied cringing.

Ever since Jackson had seen Jasper's ear torn off during a battle in one of his visions, he had been repeating the action. The first time this had happened was before the happy family left for the Arctic, during one of Jasper's many return visits. It took him about a day to complete the journey when traveling alone, so he came back to visit about once a month during that year.

The original ear-biting incident occurred when Alice and Jasper had taken the children shopping at the mall. Jasper was walking around with Jackson on his shoulders, when the baby leaned down and bit off the ear. Alice explained to the human witnesses that Jasper had a prosthetic ear because he was a veteran from the Somali war. Conveniently enough, the humans always had a new war to use in Jasper's excuses.

A few human kids were really freaked out, but the adults bought Alice's story. The lack of blood on Jasper's part was one of the major reasons the human adults believed that he really had a fake ear. And a baby really could not be blamed for accidentally pulling off his father's fake ear, so the adult humans ushered their children away and told them not to stare at the brave veteran and his nice family, and Alice reattached the ear before scolding Jackson.

Speaking of scolding Jackson, now that Jasper's ear was on straight, Alice asked, "Jackson, what did Mommy say about biting Daddy's ear off?"

"No!" Jackson exclaimed remembering Alice's words from the last time it had happened.

"Good. Now don't do it again or I'll let Daddy bite your ear off!" Alice threatened exposing her teeth.

"No, Mama!" Jackson cried and ducked his head in the crook of Alice's neck.

"He already had a timeout, Alice," Jasper pleaded on Jackson's behalf. He did not want to feel the fear coming from his son for a moment longer, because it was worse than feeling his ear being ripped off and reattached.

"It's okay, Jackson, Mommy isn't going to bite you," Alice soothed her son as Jasper calmed him.

Then Bella and I proceeded to tell our family of our account of our arduous journey through the treacherous Arctic.


	24. Chapter 22

Edward's POV:

Jackson and Allison were not much larger, nor much more advanced, than Eliza and Masen, despite the sixty year age gap, so it was possible to entertain all four at once. And on occasion, Allison and Jackson even helped entertain the little ones for us. Allison would tell Masen and Eliza about the world and Jackson would show them his visions. With their mind-reading, they could each glean the knowledge and visions first hand from Allison and Jackson's minds. I was worried that the visions would be too scary, but they just laughed at the gore.

Allison was quite articulate, but Jackson could only say a few words, such as Mama, Dada, Ali, and just yesterday, he said 'Asen, but it would be a while yet before he said Eliza's name, according to Alice. Jackson's limited vocabulary did not bother Eliza and Masen, because they could read his mind to find out what he wanted. And Allison knew him so well that she did not need him to speak. So they all played quite well together.

There was a lot of work to be done, which was easier to do with free hands, so the four of us adults took turns watching the four babies. That way, three could work unhindered, while one watched the children. Alice had her blood bank to keep up with, while Jasper, Bella, and I had the new house to build. We even had alone time on the schedule, because baby vampiric hearing was excellent and they never slept. I began to appreciate just how lucky Bella and I were that Nessie had slept as a baby.

Today was my turn to watch the kids, so first thing this morning, Bella put a baby in each of my arms. She kissed us all, before we parted ways and I headed off to the main house to wait for Jasper and Alice, who showed up moments later, to drop off Jackson and Allison. And while my attention was focused on getting Allison and Jackson settled after their parents' departure, Eliza decided to bite me on my collarbone. Ouch.

"Eliza, Daddy said not to bite!" I reprimanded my daughter, prying her teeth from my granite flesh.

The babies were all venomous, so their bites hurt and left a scar. My second bite mark ever came from my baby daughter and was quickly followed by a hundred more in kind. Jasper's empathy indicated that Eliza bit more than the others, due to stress caused by her gift, because there were simply too many voices in her head for her to cope, so she bit, instead. And as she had a mental shield, I could not read her mind to tell when she was liable to do so. My only warnings would come from Alice, who would occasionally scry the bites, or Jasper, who would feel the emotional distress.

But neither of them had bothered warning me this morning, as they probably thought I would have learned her triggers by now. It seemed that anytime additional people, besides Bella, Masen, and myself, entered the room, Eliza was prone to biting. This was because every time someone else was around, Eliza was inundated with all of the new thoughts, causing her to stress out.

Once I extricated myself from my daughter's teeth, a procedure that was quite risky in and of itself, as I once lost a finger doing so, I provided the child with one of Alice's chewing wooden dowels, and set her down on the floor. Since Eliza was now settled, I turned to watch Jackson and Allison, who were entertaining Masen by jumping up in the air and trying to do back flips. Alice had seen the children doing back flips in one of her visions, so Jasper had demonstrated the procedure, and ever since, Jackson and Allison had been obsessed with the idea and practicing non-stop.

The little bloodsuckers almost had it too and their only problem was that they could not quite jump high enough to execute the back flip in the air, before they began to come back down. Consequently, their flips always seemed to tilt to the side, and they would land rolling, instead of on their feet. After the tenth such demonstration, Masen laughed and projected, 'Again!'

Allison and Jackson obliged, so I turned my attention back to Eliza, just in time to see that she had bitten off a one-inch chunk of wood. "Don't you dare swallow that, Elizabeth Marie Masen Cullen! Spit it out right this minute!" I exclaimed, lunging for the child and preparing to wrestle my fingers into her mouth to remove the wooden chunk.

Eliza spit out the wood into my hand and started laughing.

"Oh you think that is funny, do you?"

Eliza nodded her head and continued to laugh.

"You like it when Daddy pumps your stomach, huh?" I asked, and this time Eliza shook her head, hopefully remembering what had happened the last time she had swallowed a bit of wood.

Bella and I had hoped the wooden chuck would be regurgitated naturally, but Alice could not see that happening. Instead, Alice saw the bit of wood getting stuck in Eliza's digestive track, where it would remain indefinitely. And since the longer we waited, the greater the odds of the wood being lodged in Eliza's small intestine, I decided to pump the child's stomach and manually remove the wood. Needless to say, she had not been happy about it.

Eliza was about to cry, just remembering the incident, so I decided to distract her by sitting her down in front of the toy piano I had bought. Eliza smiled and began to play, so I turned my attention once more to what the other three children were doing. Masen was still laughing and watching Jackson and Allison attempt back flip after back flip. But this time, when he asked for an encore, Jackson agreed, but Allison went over to Eliza.

Eliza was picking out a simple nocturne I had taught her last night and Allison liked the pretty melody, but Masen was not pleased with just the one entertainer, so he called out telepathically, 'Ali, come back!' before crawling over to the piano himself. Masen sat himself down next to Allison and took her hand, projecting something that I could not hear, due to his shield.

When the song ended, Masen let go of Allison's hand and grabbed the toy piano, projecting, 'My turn,' to Allison. Masen began to show off by attempting a much more complex piece on the tiny instrument and I began to think that maybe I ought to buy the children keyboards to play with. They take turns sitting on my lap and playing on my piano every night, but if they each had keyboards, they could play together, instead of taking turns.

I should have been paying more attention to the children, instead of contemplating future duets. I snapped out of my musings and quickly settled the dispute that had been raging between Eliza and Masen. The dispute started when Eliza picked up the toy piano and smashed it over Masen's head for not sharing. I was in the middle of comforting Masen, because his feelings were hurt, and scolding Eliza, when I noticed Jackson's vision.

Jackson was having a rather disturbing vision of the recent past. He had been missing Alice and was searching the past for what she was doing. I wish I had been able to stop Jackson before the vision started, but it was too late. Alice and Jasper were having some private time together, and apparently had just finished doing some rather inappropriate things to each other; well, inappropriate for baby vampiric visions, that is. The worst part was that Masen and Eliza could read minds, so they saw the vision first hand.

Jackson was scared and started crying, thinking, 'What's Mama doing to Dada?'

Of all the visions to be scared of... the boy sees decapitations six times a day, and this is the vision that frightens him? Well, I would be frightened, too, if I saw my parents doing _that_. This was one of the reasons the kids could not be left alone. That, and they sometimes ate wood and bit each other.

"Shhh. It is okay, Jackson. Mommy is not hurting Daddy. Daddy is fine." I picked Jackson up, placating the child. Eliza and Masen were not nearly as upset and seemed mostly confused. Luckily, Allison did not see the vision and was perfectly fine. At least one of them would not be scarred for life.

Once I had calmed the three of them down, I put on a human TV show for toddlers, because Jackson, Eliza, and Masen loved this show. Allison, however, would not watch TV. Not ever. Allison was always the hardest to entertain.

I still liked to ask Allison questions, so I pulled her onto my lap, remembering my question from my time with Seth back in La Push. "Can half vampires reproduce?" I asked, wondering if Nessie would ever give me grandchildren.

'Yes,' she thought, beause she still preferred not to speak out loud to me.

"How is that possible? How do vampire, human, and shape-shifter genetics work?"

'Well, you know that shape-shifters, vampires, werewolves, and humans share a common ancestor, to the exclusion of all other species, right?'

"What about elves, hobbits, and dwarfs?"

'All close relatives, but not quite as close. They're all more basal in the tree of the genus Homo. Vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters are all more closely related to each other than humans, with vampires and shape-shifters being closer to each other than to werewolves.'

"Okay. Go on," I replied. I did not know any of this, but Allison must be right, given that she was all-knowing.

'So the (vampire, shape-shifter), werewolf clade diverged from the human lineage about one million years ago,' she thought. She had actually included the parentheses in said thoughts.

"Clade?"

'A grouping of closely related species,' she thought, rolling her eyes at me before continuing. 'So our clade diverged as the result of a viral infection. Our side was infected with a lysogenic virus and the humans weren't. Because the virus was lysogenic, it was maintained in plasmid form in our cells. Over time, it became a stable genetic element in all our cells. This plasmid kept a low copy number, with just two per cell.

'The plasmid also prevented us from being re-infected by the original virus. Over time, the plasmid evolved and acquired genes from our autosomal chromosomes, including the skill cassettes. Eventually, the plasmid was so changed that it no longer recognized the original virus as self. We were no longer immune, and so were re-infected with the original virus.

'So, we now had two alleles of the plasmid, each present in two copies per cell. The new copy evolved and mutated until it too possessed cellular genes. Over time, the plasmids grew via gene accumulation until they resembled bona fide chromosomes. That's why we have four more chromosomes than humans.'

"I see. But how are hybrids able to reproduce?"

'Well, hybrids are often viable but sterile, like a mule. This is because the chromosomes are unable to line up correctly during meiosis. But this isn't so with vampire hybrids. Remember when I said the two sets of chromosomes originated from the same lysogenic virus?'

"Yes," I replied, not seeing where she was going with this.

'Well, they are homologous-' she started thinking, but I cut her off.

"Homologous?"

'They share a common ancestor; they can pair with each other during meiosis. This is normally a bad thing. There are four copies of the chromosome, i.e. partial tetraploidy-'

Here, I cut her off again. "Tetraploidy?"

'I thought you were a doctor? Didn't you have to take any genetics at all?'

"Yes. I took Intro to Genetics in undergrad," I replied, thinking about how long ago that was.

'We're normally diploid, meaning we have two copies of each chromosome. Tetraploids have four copies of each. We're partially tetraploid, in that we have four copies of the vampiric chromosome. If all four pairs are present and pair up, they do not separate correctly. Fortunately, all four copies are not identical, so instead of all four lining up, two sets of two line up. This is called pseudodiploidy, because we appear to be diploids when we're really tetraploids. This is how full blood vampires are able to undergo meiosis.

'But, when a half vampire's chromosomes line up for meiosis, there are no longer four copies, but just two. They're divergent enough that they normally don't pair up, but when no partner is found, meiosis stalls. The extra time allows these partially matched chromosomes to pair up, and meiosis proceeds as usual.'

"What about quarter vampires, three quarter humans? Can they reproduce?"

'Yes. A quarter vampire inherits only one of the four vampiric chromosomes. But since they are derived from lysogenic plasmids with a copy number of two, the chromosome automatically doubles producing an identical copy. The copy then pairs with the original, enabling proper meiosis. So, all future generations of hybrids would retain two vampiric chromosomes, despite being watered down with human DNA.'

"Is that why the Quileutes have retained their ability to shift, even after countless generations of breeding with humans?"

'Good! You can be taught! Wow, Darwin, I'm impressed!' These thoughts were only slightly sarcastic. 'And because they're half shape-shifter, they only have two of the four shape-shifting chromosomes. They have the shape-shifting cassette, but not that flippase gene. This means they're stuck with the wolf and telepathy cassettes permanently on, and can't flip to other shapes or skills. So they're stuck as telepathic wolves, unless a translocation occurs, crudely flipping the cassettes, but that's very rare.'

"Is that what happened to allow the Quileutes to switch from katydid to wolf form?" I asked, remembering Alice's text from that night with the Quileute elders all those years ago.

'Yes, you figured it out!' she laughed with surprise and clapped her hands together. Apparently, I had finally done something right.

"So, will Nessie and Jacob be able to produce children?"

'Yes, their children will be quarter vampire, quarter shape-shifter, and half human. But if their children take humans for mates, their grandchildren will all get one or the other chromosome.'

"Meaning my great grandchildren will all be half shape-shifter or half vampire?"

'Yes. Although crossing over may occur, mixing the two. But that's less likely, because vampiric and shape-shifter chromosomes are divergent. And since Nessie is first generation half vampire, she has a copy of the flippase gene. Half of her offspring will inherit this gene, flipping the shifting cassette and shuffling the activated shape and skill. Her grandchildren, however, will most likely be stuck with the new shapes... unless crossing over occurs.'

"Awesome! But what about hybrid vampires mated to full-fledged vampires? Can they reproduce, as well?" I asked, remembering Nahuel's oldest sister, who was mated to a regular vampire.

'Yes, but not in the human way, because they lay eggs. The presence of three vampiric chromosomes causes the unpaired chromosome to automatically double, producing a complete set. It's not possible for the virus to exist stabily in an odd number of copies, so whenever this happens, the unpaired chromosome always doubles. So any offspring of a half vampire and a full vampire would be a full vampire.'

I thought for a moment about the implications of this knowledge. Nahuel's sister and her mate must have produced eggs and mistaken them for gall stones, just like the rest of us had at first. And if Nessie ever wanted to dump Jacob, she could choose a human or a vampiric mate to replace him and still be able to bring me grandchildren. Not that I had anything against Jacob...

"But what about vampiric transformation by bite? How does that work?" I finally asked, after my long pause.

'Well, when we bite a human, our venom enters their system. Venom contains active virions that infect the human cells. Each vampiric chromosome was derived from a lysogenic virus and still maintains the ability to reproduce in viral form, because viral coat proteins are encoded by the vampiric chromosomes. Both chromosomes are incorporated into virions, one chromosome per virion, and released into the venom supply. At least two virions, one of each type, must infect every cell in the human body. As cells near the bite site are converted, more virions of both types are produced, released into the blood, and convert more humans cells, until the entire body has been transformed. Two vampiric chromosomes infect each cell and are each spontaneously doubled as part of the lysogenic process, resulting in four vampiric chromosomes.'

"So why is Nahuel venomous, but Nessie is not?" I asked next.

'Random luck of the draw. There's a one in ten chance that any hybrid will be venomous, because with half the proper number of chromosomes, the expression levels of all of the proteins are reduced in half. This includes the proteins in the signal transduction pathway that leads to virion formation. With inadequate levels of protein, this pathway is only turned on and functional in one out of every ten individuals. Nahuel is the lucky one.'

"So other hybrid males would likely not be venomous, while it's possible for female hybrids to be venomous?"

'Correct.'

"Okay. So how is it that female vampires can produce gametes, when their bodies cannot change? Human females need to go through a monthly cycle to produce gametes."

'Our reproduction system is significantly different, compared to a human's, due to genes on our additional chromosomes. Female vampires produce gametes continuously, just like males.'

And with that, the television show ended.

"Dada!" 'Daddy!' 'Stupid Uncle!' Eliza, Masen, and Jackson called simultaneously. Jackson had started thinking "Stupid Uncle" for my name, after hearing Allison use it.

"Jackson, my name is Uncle Edward. Think Uncle Edward."

'Stupid Uncle Edward?' he thought back at me.

"No, just Uncle Edward," I insisted.

'Ali calls you Stupid Uncle. Ali's always right.'

"Allison is not allowed to call me that, either."

'Fine. Uncle Edward, will you please pick me up and comb my hair?'

Jackson definitely had a hair fetish, but I did not want to get in trouble with Jasper for encouraging it, so I sat Allison down and replied, "I cannot pick up all of you. Why don't you tell us a vision, Jackson? I will translate for Allison."

'Okay.' He looked to the past and found another war and it seemed he preferred violence and war. He scried the vision, Masen, Eliza, and I saw it in his mind, and I repeated the scene for Allison.

"It was the Great Werewolf slash Vampire War. This war occurred after the Great Eldritch Creature War, and after the humans had genocided the hobbits and elves, so that there were only three species of mythological creatures left: vampire, werewolves, and half shape-shifters.

"The werewolves, also known as the children of the moon, and vampires have always hated each other. We kill them; they kill us. We set fire to their hatcheries and they set fire to our nurseries. We kill entire populations of werewolves and they kill entire populations of vampires. We have constantly been in an escalating war with our mortal enemy since the dawn of time-"

'You mean ever since our two species diverged one million years ago,' Allison chimed in.

"So our numbers had rebounded nicely after the Eldritch Creature War, but so had theirs. For many years, there were so few of each kind that we did not cross paths. But as our numbers rose, we met again. And we hated each other again. The werewolves still remembered what we had done to them in the past, and they would not forgive us.

"They came down on an unsuspecting coven in the moonlight. We were attacked with no provocation! Our kind had no memory of past conflict with the werewolves, but if this was how they responded to strangers, we were not above genocide ourselves."

'Genocide is the defining characteristic of the genus Homo-a synapomorphy,' Allison thought.

I raised an eyebrow in confusion at Allison's interruption, indicating my desire for her to elaborate.

'A shared derived trait that can be used to classify species into a higher grouping. All members of the genus Homo are capable of genocide,' she replied silently, before I continued translating.

"We waited until the first night after the next full moon. We came down on them out the hills with every vampire we could scourer up and a thirst for vengeance. We killed their men, their women, and the children. We broke into their hatchery and set fire to their eggs, to their hosts, and to their babies. We slaughtered the lot, set fire to the remains of their city, leaving naught but burnt corpses and ash in our wake.

"But that was not the only werewolf city. When a werewolf from a neighboring city stopped by for a visit and noticed the city burnt to the ground, a frenzy for retribution broke loose. They attacked us with a vengeance, mournful for their lost children, babies, parasites, and eggs. How uncivilized they thought us to destroy innocents.

"They even took offense to our change in reproductive habits. Biting was thought barbaric, reserved for making armies in times of war. The fact that we had switched permanently to the bite was seen as an act of aggression. We had no way of knowing this, and there never was any hope of peace.

"So the war waged on and on and on. Both sides sustained heavy losses. Both sides bit humans to add numbers to their armies. The fighting continued, and the human population slumped. The fights escalated year after year. Finally, after one hundred years of fighting, both sides were so thoroughly decimated that they ceased to come in contact with each other.

"The werewolves hid in northern Europe to recoup their losses. The vampires stayed in southern Europe and multiplied quickly. The vampires reproduced so much faster via the bite that they quickly outnumbered the werewolves a thousand to one and the werewolves never had a chance. The vampires would hunt them down and kill them as fast as they reproduced, because werewolves were still loath to reproduce via the bite, except for military purposes. And so the vampires won."


	25. Chapter 23

Edward's POV:

Bella and I stayed in the Arctic for twenty-two years before Carlisle and Esme joined us. During that time we managed to complete our house, with three bedrooms, three baths, one office, a small library, den, large living room complete with piano, and even a small kitchen. Our purpose in adding the kitchen was originally for Nessie, but we found that it came in useful for synthetic blood storage, plus meal times could be messy.

Once, when I was watching the kids, Jackson accidentally bit right through the metal sippy cup, covering himself in blood. It would not have been so bad if it were not for the three other young vampires present. They caught the scent of the blood and lost control. I had to call Alice and Bella in to help me get Allison, Eliza, and Masen off of him. I cleaned Jackson up and gave him a new cup, but venom stings for days and leaves a permanent scar. Now Jackson and Jasper had two matching scars each above their left eyebrows.

Thankfully there was always enough synthetic blood to go around. Alice had expanded her production capacities in anticipation of Carlisle and Esme's arrival. I, however, preferred to hunt animals than drink from a cup. The others were more optimistic about the synthetic blood, but preferred to save it for the children, as we were slowly building up our supply in case of emergency.

Today Carlisle and Esme were expected to finish their journey to our island, so this morning Alice left to meet them at the cave by the southern tunnel. She would bring them back to the main house and then give them the customary tour of the island. Esme already knew what to expect, but this would be Carlisle's first time on the island, so he would have to be shown the layout and all the best hunting opportunities.

Bella and I were assigned baby watching detail today, so we waited at the main house for Jasper to arrive with Allison and Jackson. Jasper was expecting a shipment of supplies to arrive by helicopter and so would be otherwise occupied during the highly anticipated arrival. But, it should not take him long to finish with his mission and he planned to be done in plenty of time for this evening's celebration.

"Good morning, Bella, Edward," Jasper called as he entered with a baby in each arm.

"Morning, Jasper. How are your little monsters today?" Bella asked, turning her head and leaving me to sort out the dispute that Eliza and Masen were currently having over a rock Eliza had found outside. It was an ordinary, four inch in diameter, round stone, with nothing more special about it than a streak of rust colored quartz down the middle.

"Mine!" Eliza shouted, holding onto her side of the rock for dear life.

Eliza was not telepathic and was now saying single words, but Masen, with his telepathy, had no need to talk, so he still had not said his first word.

'I just want to look at it!' Masen projected throughout the room, yanking the rock towards him. They had both started walking last year, enabling the epic tug-of-war fights that were now a regular sight in my household.

"Masen, let go of Eliza's rock and we will find you another rock," I said to my son. "A little help here, Jasper?"

"Mine!" Eliza shouted again, still clinging to the rock.

'I'll give it right back,' Masen projected, ignoring me as the rock began to crack.

"Sure," Jasper said imbuing the room with calm, but it was already too late, because the rock cracked and shattered, sending shards flying throughout the room.

Eliza looked down at the fragment in her hands and was so furious that she crushed it into sand, which she threw into Masen's face. Masen was too busy looking at his shard to duck and so got a face full of sand and started screaming, despite Jasper's calming influence. Eliza always seemed to be able to get Masen when he was off his guard, so she pressed her advantage and went in for the kill. I saw her lunging at Masen, mouth wide open and sharp teeth exposed, so I interceded by picking her up, effectively saving Masen's neck, literally.

Jasper's calming finally started to take hold. Well, that combined with the lethargy he was now pumping into the room at full blast. Allison and Jackson, still in his arms, seemed to be hit the hardest and were as close to unconscious as vampires could get, because their heads were lolling around on their necks, their bodies were limp, and their minds were blank. Since they were no longer holding on or balancing themselves, they began to sway in their father's arms, so Jasper laid them down on the floor to recover.

Masen fell to the ground right where he was, losing the cherished rock fragment in the process, and forgetting about the harmless sand that had been the source of his tearless sobs. Eliza went limp in my arms with her head hanging back and her tongue hanging out as venomous drool dripped down her chin, so I laid her down on the floor by my feet and went to straighten out Masen.

My movements were slow and sluggish for once, because Jasper was still pumping out the lethargy full blast. I looked over to Bella to see why shes was not helping me with Masen and realized that she was just as affected as the children, probably because she had never experienced the brunt of Jasper's powers before. I guess after all of these years of living with Jasper, I was beginning to become immune to the lethargy. Either that or my mind reading abilities showed me what was happening and allowed me to fight against it.

'Have you noticed it?' Jasper's thoughts asked as he replayed an emotional map in his head, while still pumping out the serenity and lethargy. He rarely thought about what the raw input from his power felt like, and when he did, it was hard for me to interpret. It was like he had a sixth sense, completely different from vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. It was always there, coloring his perception of the world, and if I had to describe it, I would say it was like a cross between sight and sound.

The emotions would appear in a three dimensional framework, like sight, except that his eyes were not needed for this process. And instead of seeing sharply contrasting colors, the emotions were depicted as diffuse clouds vibrating back and forth like a sound wave. These waves were colored according to frequency, but not in the sense of the colors of the rainbow: they were colored with emotions, each one having a different taste and smell.

The raw emotional map Jasper was showing me was a replay of when he walked in the room, and he focused on the Masen shaped blob of emotions. I watched as Jasper teased apart each emotion one by one and showed it to me. There was curiosity over the rock. Anger over the fact that Eliza would not share, not even for a moment. Hatred for the sibling that threw sand in his eyes. Confusion over her silent mind. And strongest of all, jealousy. Jealousy that I would take her side instead of his. Jealousy that she had found a pretty rock, while all he had found was a colorful feather. And most of all, jealousy that Allison would like the rock better than the feather.

In the replay, Masen looked to Allison for an instant, and his emotional map shifted instantaneously. From curiosity, anger, confusion, and jealousy, to just a flash of love and adoration, before he shifted his sight back to the rock that was falling from his hands as the lethargy took effect and he fell to the floor. There was just one more emotion emitted from the boy before he succumbed completely to Jasper's power and that was embarrassment. He was embarrassed that Allison had seen him like that.

'Your son likes my daughter. He tries to impress her every time I watch them and it always leads to a fight between your children,' Jasper thought to me as he slowly began to let up on the lethargy, but leaving the calmness on full blast. 'You need to talk to him about it, because we can't go on like this.'

I nodded to Jasper, thinking that I would have to talk to Bella about this later. "Alice?" I asked Jasper, wondering if Alice had seen anything relating to this subject in a vision.

'No, she hasn't seen anything: they're only babies, after all,' Jasper thought as he let the last of the lethargy go.

Bella was the first to rouse, getting up off the couch to retrieve a whimpering Masen from the floor. As she did so, Jasper picked Allison and Jackson back up, leaning their heads against his chest and I did the same with Eliza, hoping that the calmness would last once it was removed.

'Why do you two always set Daddy off?' Jackson thought to Eliza and Masen as he came around. He seemed to be the most disoriented from the lethargy.

'I want my feather,' Masen projected to me as he roused.

I picked up the feather from where it had fallen and handed it over as Eliza stirred in my arms and said, "Rock."

"We'll get you a new rock," I told Eliza as Allison began to think about the pretty new dress she was wearing, as if she had not just been knocked out by her father. Apparently Allison was getting used to it and was now able to go right back to her previous train of thought.

'For you,' Masen projected to Allison holding out the feather to her.

'Thanks Masen,' Allison thought back, before asking, 'Wanna go play?' She showed him a picture of the stars in the galaxy to show him what she had in mind.

Masen nodded, so they climbed down from Bella and Jasper's laps, respectively, and walked over to the corner to exchange thoughts. I wondered what they were thinking about, but with Masen's shield, I could not hear him unless he projected out, and he was also shielding Allison by holding her hand, so I could not read either of their minds. But judging from her earlier thoughts, she was probably sharing her knowledge of astronomy with the boy.

"Jasper, if you will stay just a moment longer, I will take Eliza to get a new rock," I said and he nodded.

When I returned a minute later, new rock in Eliza's hand, the serenity was still unbroken. Well except for Jackson, who was using a piece of cardboard to jump on and slide across the carpet, destroying the rug. But that was typical behavior for him, and we had come to expect a new rug to be added to the list of needed supplies regularly, so no one even thought twice about it anymore.

I sat Eliza down and she walked over to watch Jackson's antics, before requesting back flips and cartwheels from the boy. And since peace had been restored to the children, Jasper kissed his children and took his leave, really needing to meet those humans at the helicopter pad, because no one wanted to risk the humans arriving unsupervised and chancing a look around our island.

After he left, Bella and I sat the four little monsters down and explained to them what was going to happen today. They had all met Carlisle and Esme before, but Eliza and Masen had not spent enough time around them to be excited for their return, although they were curious to meet their new cousins. Allison and Jackson, however, were extremely excited to see their grandparents again, and neither could stop thinking about being held by Carlisle, because he was their favorite. This was because they had spent more time with him during their year in the States when Esme had been with their father preparing this estate.

"I have the perfect matching outfits for Aiden and Carl! And I also already ordered an entire new wardrobe for both of you, Esme and Carlisle! You'll look wonderful in all of the new winter wear. Oh Esme, it's been ages since the two of us went on a good shopping trip!" I heard Alice's constant banter before they entered the house. Carl was the nickname Esme had given Carlisle II to distinguish him from his father.

Alice's shopping tirade grew louder and closer as they entered the house and made their way to the nursery, but she stopped talking altogether when the new family of four stepped through the nursery room door. Carlisle was carrying Aiden, who had Esme's eyes, smile, and caramel hair, with a face shaped like Carlisle's. Also, the child in Carlisle's arms was five inches taller than the one in Esme's, despite the fact that they were the same age and from the same parents. When Carlisle stood next to Esme with his free arm wrapped around her, Aiden looked like a giant compared to his brother.

Esme was holding Carl, a blond baby with her heart shaped face, but Carlisle's smile, checks, chin, and nose. And she was absolutely beaming. She was thinking about how happy she was with her new family and to finally be reunited with us.

Carlisle gave Esme a quick kiss on the forehead and Allison and Jackson rushed to their feet, holding their arms up in the air and asking to be picked up. Carlisle picked Jackson up with his free arm, while Esme did the same with Allison, and after a few hugs and kisses, my parental figures switched grandchildren. Bella and I picked up Masen and Eliza, respectively, and joined in the happy reunion.

"We've missed you, son," Carlisle told me while he hugged me and kissed Eliza. "You too, granddaughter of mine."

"Look at you, you're all grown up with such a beautiful family," Esme gushed kissing my checks and doing her best to embarrass me, before moving on to Eliza.

After the initial round of greetings, both Allison and Jackson insisted on seconds on the hugs and kisses from their grandparents, especially from Carlisle. And while Carlisle obliged with endless kisses, Esme held Carl and Aiden in her arms. Esme was happier than I had ever seen her and I did not need Jasper's power to see that she was beaming with joy and happiness.

From Esme's thoughts I could tell that she was still euphoric over the new arrivals, although the euphoria was tinged with occasional sadness when she would look at her children and be reminded of the human son she had lost or the destroyed eggs in her pocket. Those eggs were the only things she had carried with her from her old life.

Esme could not help but think that Carl and Aiden were really her fourth and fifth children and what life would have been like if all her children were alive today; what life should be like. But then she would look down at her two very much alive children and see their smiling faces looking back up at her and all was right with the world again.

No amount of sadness or regret could dampen the joy of this occasion for Esme, but the thought of putting her children down and leaving them, even if it was with Bella and myself, was very hard for her to come to terms with. Eventually, after a myriad of kisses, Esme handed us her babies and left with Carlisle and Alice in order to start the typical island tour.

Once Bella and I were left alone with all six babies, Aiden and Carl were feeling scared that their parents had left them with total strangers: us. Bella had Carl in her arms and he was still having trouble interpreting his gift. Apparently, in addition to being able to heal others, he could sense the health of others and this information was overlaid on top of his visual perception, like a heat map. We all appeared as we were, but at the same time, we were shining bright white, indicating our maximally good health. He was having trouble flipping back and forth between the two foci, and therefore was confused and disoriented, not to mention his unease over being left with total strangers in a strange place.

I was holding Aiden, who had a very peaceful and soothing mind. Just having him around seemed to calm Eliza and Masen down a notch; not as much as when Jasper turned on the calm, but enough that no one was attacking one another. The four older children were clamoring at our feet, trying to get a better look at the new arrivals, and while doing so, they were scaring the new babies. How had Jasper managed this when we first arrived with Eliza and Masen? Oh right, his calming gift. I wished I had that talent every time it was my turn to watch the kids.

"Okay, everyone please sit down and we will show you your new cousins," I announced. Allison obliged my request right away, pulling Jackson down next to her, because she was the most mature of the bunch.

Bella had to coax Masen and Eliza further, "Sit down, sweeties." They finally sat, too still like all vampires, and waited, while Aiden and Carl began to calm down now that they were not surrounded by monsters. "Aiden and Carl, these are your cousins Allison, Jackson, Eliza, and Masen."

Eliza stood up and reached out to touch Aiden. "It's all right," I soothed him, trying to let him know that he was all right and that Eliza would not hurt him.

"Baby," Eliza said, touching Aiden's hair that was just beginning to grow in.

'I want to hold the baby,' Masen thought at me, since Bella was shielding as usual.

"No, Masen. He is as big as you," I replied. Carl was a few inches shorter than Masen, while Aiden was an inch taller. This was because Carl and Aiden were as big as one year olds, while Masen and Eliza had only grown a small amount in the last twenty-two years; they now looked to be about fourteen month olds.

Masen was close to a tantrum, so Bella asked, "Have you kids ever heard the story of Shrek the Ogre?"

The older four children all shook their heads and Masen was sufficiently distracted by the promise of a story, so Bella continued with her diversionary tactic. I sighed gratefully at the change in activity, knowing that even Allison would listen to stories, so I took the opportunity to make their sippy cups. Of course I had to take Aiden with me, because Bella could not hold two babies and keep four monsters under control at the same time. Thus I made the cups one handed, handed one to Aiden, and carried the other five back to the nursery room.

I got back to Bella just in time, because Masen was hitting Eliza over the head with a maraca. The maraca never stood a chance against Eliza's hard head, and the beads made a soft pinging sound, like the scattering of sand, as they fell to the floor.

"Masen! Why'd you do that?" Bella demanded as she took a cup from me and handed it to Carl.

Eliza started crying tearless sobs, because her feelings were hurt. "It's okay, honey. Do you want a drink?" I asked, offering her a cup. She nodded taking the cup. Jackson and Allison also took cups, but I waited until Bella was done scolding Masen to give him one.

After a very long hour of baby sitting in which Jackson managed to kick the light fixture during a back flip, sending glass shards flying and plunging us into darkness, Alice finally returned with Esme. According to Alice's visions, Masen had been contemplating his odds at a successful removal of Eliza's head, but there was only a five percent chance of success and fifty-five percent chance that he would go through with his plan. Unless of course Bella and I turned our backs, then his odds of success went up to fifty percent and the odds that he would try increased to ninety-nine percent.

'Don't leave those two alone for a minute,' Alice warned, again. This was now a typical warning from my favorite sister, because she frequently scried my children misbehaving. Thankfully, no decapitation had occurred so far, because Bella and I kept extremely close watch on the two of them whenever they were in the same room together.

"It'll only take us a few days to set up all of the furniture and furnishing for our house, so Carlisle and Jasper are over at Emmett and Rosalie's building site. We're planning on getting a head start on their house. Maybe we can complete it before they arrive," Esme said excited about the new project and picking up Carl for a hug, happy to be reunited once more with her precious son.

"Bella and I can watch the leaches, Esme. Why don't you and Edward go join them?" Alice suggested as Esme used her other hand to retrieve Aiden from me as well.

I smiled gratefully at Alice for giving me an excuse to leave the little monsters, thinking that Jasper's empathy was definitely needed here. We would have to rearrange the chore schedule so that Jasper had most of the baby watching duties. "Sure, Alice, but maybe I should send Jasper back here to help you. Then Bella could come with us?"

'You're right. Jasper's needed more here,' Alice thought as she watched Eliza pummel Masen with the tambourine; the metal made a loud clanging sound as it was mangled. 'Remind me why you bought them musical instruments again?'

"I thought they would be educational. I did not consider their possible use as weapons," I admitted dejectedly.

Alice trilled her high ringing laugh at my response while Bella confiscated the tambourine remains and put Eliza on a timeout sans lethargy. Alice moved in to stand guard over the timeout chair, so Bella retreated to my side.

"Send Jazz straight back so that Esme can join you at the build site," Alice instructed once Masen was deemed to be fine.

Bella and I took off to get Jasper, thankful for the reprieve from watching the little monsters. The two of us had spent almost three hours at the tiring chore and even though I could not read her mind, I could tell from the look on her face that she was just as ready for a break as I was. An hour or two of build planning would be just the break we needed to prepare us for the evening of family togetherness that was in store for us to celebrate the arrival of our parents.

"Jasper told me something earlier," I revealed to my wife as soon as we were out the door and out of hearing range, not wanting to discuss this in front of the children.

"Hmm?" Bella asked reaching out for my hand as we ran together.

"Masen likes Allison."

"What!" Bella spluttered stopping in her tracks. "Does he like like her or just regular like her?"

"I can't read Masen's mind, but Jasper can read his emotions and he is sure that it is something more than regular friendship. That is why Eliza and Masen keep fighting so much when Allison is around."

"Isn't he too young?" Bella asked still in shock at the news, although we did resume our run.

"It's not sexual. I asked Allison once before about imprinting with the wolves and she mentioned that it is similar to vampiric love, just we have more free will and do not fall in love at first sight. If the wolves can imprint on babies, then maybe this is similar and our babies can tell who their mates will be already," I mused out loud.

"Well as long as it's just an indication of a future mating and not actual mating, then it should be fine," Bella replied.

"It cannot be actual mating until they reach puberty at the age of two thousand, according to Allison. Their bodies appear full grown before then, but juvenile vampires are just not capable of a sexual thought before their minds finish the maturation process."

"Thank goodness for that," Bella replied with a smirk.

"We should talk to him about his jealousy when we get home tonight, but for now, let us run," I said picking up the pace of our run. We ran the rest of the way to the building site at full speed in order to complete our task of retrieving Jasper before it was too late. Maybe Esme would even deem to leave her children again in order to help us with the build planning.


	26. Chapter 24

Edward's POV:

Fourteen years passed, with only a year left until Emmett and Rosalie were expected to join us, when things changed. Alice had been having visions indicating that Larissa's depression was worsening for a while now, as she realized her death was near, but the human had not decided what to do about her depression, and so Alice had not seen anything of consequence. That was until Larissa met four new friends at the senior center.

Megan, Linda, Cheryl, and Patty were four old bats that had bonded over breast cancer when they all had it about ten years back. They all survived, but had become addicted to medicinal marijuana. The posse, now cancer free, switched their ailment to glaucoma, but kept the prescription the same. Sure it was fraudulent and illegal, but they were already so old that they did not care; they did not care about anything anymore except getting high.

So when the four smoking grannies invited Larissa over for a little something something, Larissa was too depressed not to cave to the peer pressure. Alice told Rosalie immediately, who confronted Larissa at Linda's house, before she could do anything illegal, but the idea was already in her head. Alice called again with the bad news before Rosalie even got Larissa home: the human would just keep trying until eventually she succeeded in smoking her brains out.

Rosalie and Emmett turned on Skype and we had a cross-country family meeting regarding what to do about the Larissa situation. Rosalie, Esme, and I all thought Larissa should be given another chance and allowed to stay with her human family. Alice, Carlisle, and Bella thought she should be brought to our island to ensure that the unborn vampire not be harmed. And I am not even going to say what Jasper suggested, other than that it was not very human-friendly.

Ultimately it was Emmett's egg, Emmett's human, and Emmett's decision, and he decided to play it safe and send Larissa to the Arctic, but there were a few complications with sending a human to us. The most obvious problem being that a human would not survive the journey by foot. Luckily Alice saw no complication with transporting hosts via helicopter, so Emmett decided to fly her in, but there were also three other hosts to consider, as well as who would watch them.

Nikolai opted to stay with his sister and see our newest estate before his impending death, despite the fact that this meant he would not be able to spend his final days with his family. Nikolai loved his human family, but he also loved his vampire one, and it was only a difference of ten months for him. So he kissed his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren farewell and boarded the helicopter with Larissa.

Rosalie and Emmett ran ahead on foot, but this still left two human hosts in the States. We always knew that Dava and Skxawng would have to be left when Emmett and Rosalie joined us, but what we were not expecting was this to occur thirteen months ahead of schedule. One of us would have to leave their children behind and travel back to the States to stay with them and now there would just be an additional year of separation.

We all agreed that it could not be Bella who went, because she was our shield, or Jasper, because he watched the little bloodsuckers with his empathy. Emmett and Rosalie were expecting to be new parents very shortly, so they were out. Esme was hard at work planning the next phase of expansion on our island, so she was not chosen. I could not go because Bella could not handle Masen and Eliza without me and no one else wanted to take my place.

Carlisle was the obvious choice, because he loves humans and it would allow him to continue to practice medicine, but in the end we decided Alice should go, because of her visions and the fact that they were her parasites. Carlisle never had any problems taking care of himself before, but this job was about taking care of the hosts, not one's self. And if something went wrong, there would only be one Cullen there to act. Therefore it was only logical that the psychic would be the best choice of protection for her own humans.

Alice left us three days before Rosalie, Emmett, and their humans arrived. I met my brother and sister with fresh, dry clothes in the southern cave when they emerged from the cold water and as soon as they changed, the three of us set off to meet their humans, who arrived shortly thereafter via helicopter. We had had humans on the island regularly to deliver supplies, but never before to stay. Emmett and Rosalie's house was already complete, so all four moved in to await the impending emergences.

When Nikolai arrived, he was excited over his reunion with the rest of us and incredibly curious regarding all of the wonders the island and the vampire babies had to offer and he had no trouble finding ways to occupy his time during his final year of life. Larissa, however, was still depressed. Her depression distressed Rosalie to no end, because she considered the human to be her daughter. Nikolai and Larissa would always be Emmett and Rosalie's children, no matter how old they grew and my brother and sister had such big hearts that they could not bear to see their daughter unhappy.

Normally we would have asked Jasper to help out with lifting the depression, but with Alice gone, he was in danger of falling into a depression of his own. Instead, Rosalie found another cure for Larissa's ailment in Carl. Carl had never before had an outlet for his healing abilities, because he had never encountered anyone of less than perfect health, besides one of us after a mild bite that was. It did not take him long to adjust to having Larissa around and he instinctively began treating her depression immediately.

And with her depression in remission, Larissa actually apologized to her vampire parents for all she had put them through over the years. Rosalie and Emmett were just so grateful to have their little girl back again that all her transgressions were forgiven and they instantly accepted her back into their family. Thus the unusual family had one last year together in peace and happiness before the humans passed and the vampires' lives were forever changed by the arrival of Lillian and Angel Rose.

Lillian had straight dark brown hair which insisted on sticking out in short spikes no matter how often Rosalie combed it down or how many bows she added. Angel Rose had curly blond hair that fell in short ringlets over her head. And both children looked more like Rosalie than they did Emmett, although they both had their father's dimples and easy smile. Lillian and Angel Rose were both so gorgeous that they gave Rosalie a run for her money in the looks department and if they were any more stunning they would surely be classed with Heidi and the other vampires with supernatural beauty.

Lillian was wide eyed and ready for anything, while Angel Rose was calm and content to cuddle. Out of our entire extended family, it was Emmett and Rosalie's family whose dynamic was most similar to that of a human family. The rest of us just accepted the special bond between egg bearer and child and reinforced it by always caring for our own egg. Sure we made both children call the male parent Dad and female Mom, but our roles in their lives were dependent on who carried which egg. This was not so with Emmett and Rosalie.

Emmett and Rosalie raised their vampiric babies just as they had raised their humans; as mother and father and with an equal role in both babies' lives. Rosalie regularly balanced a baby on each hip as she went about her chores and errands, just as she had done with Nikolai and Larissa. Emmett loved cuddling with Angel Rose in his arms for hours on end just as much as he loved fulfilling Lillian's quests for excitement. He was just as likely to be seen streaming across the tundra with Lillian giggling in his arms as he was lying under the stars with Angel Rose.

And although the happy family was seen with one parent holding both babies infinitely more often than the rest of us, they still had occasion to each take a child and split up. For example, on a day like today where they were both just going to hang out with family, the girls would be split up. Today it was Angel Rose that Emmett had brought with him, but last week and the week before it was Lillian.

Emmett, Jasper, and I were hanging out with our children. We were lying on the hard tundra floor, with our heads pointing inward to make a three pointed star, and enjoying an unusually warm summer day. It was almost fifty degrees out and the permafrost had thawed months ago, thanks to global warming. The smell of the pollen thick and heavy on the warm breeze reminded me of all of those hunting trips Carlisle and I had gone on with Newborn Esme back in the early nineteen twenties. We had been in the Northwest Territories of Canada then, which was both south and west of here, but it was very similar.

Alice had been gone eighteen months now and everyone missed her terribly, but no one more than Jasper. Consequently Emmett and I were attempting to distract our brother by having a boy's day with our daughters, just as we had always said we would do back when we were in the States raising hosts. The only difference was that Jasper also had Jackson with him, due to Alice's absence.

Eliza was busy with a wooden chewing dowel. She was slicing it into segments thin enough to look at under a microscope, while sitting on my chest with wood chips of her own making strewn about around her. Angel Rose, on the other hand, had a much calmer outlook on life and was content to snuggle into Emmett's chest as she laid on top of her father watching the clouds as they rolled by. Occasionally a break in the clouds would let through a chink of sunlight and when this happened, Angel Rose would shift her focus to examining the rainbow being thrown off by Emmett's face.

Jackson and Allison were both sitting on Jasper's left side, while they played a game similar to patty cake, which Jackson had seen in one of his visions of archaic baby vampires. The song was different, especially because it was not in English or any other language I knew. It was in a language so old that is sounded a bit like animal sounds, although it was clearly more complex. From Jackson's visions I knew that this was the ancestral vampire language, although it was not the only vampire language and was certainly not the most complex.

But although the language was new to me, I knew the meaning by the mental images that flickered through the children's heads. Well that and the signs the two made with their hands when they pulled back from patting each other's hands. These signs replaced the typical human clap, explaining why the game appeared so foreign despite its familiarity. Allison and Jackson finished their song by shouting out three clicking sounds, followed by three clucking sounds, and finally three hoots, as they clapped their hands together nine final times. The excitement seemed to be contagious, because both Eliza and Angel Rose let out a hoot of their own on the final hoot.

"What are your demon children teaching my sweat Angel?" Emmett asked Jasper, totally confused over the game and weird language that seemed to be filled with clicks and clucks.

"Relax, Em. It's just a nursery rhyme from the old days," Jasper answered defensively.

"Well I don't like it. We don't even know what it means," Emmett replied.

"It's fairly obvious. Allison and Jackson say the last line again one word at a time so I can translate for your uncle," Jasper instructed.

The two children nodded before making a tweeting sound and drawing the shape of a bird with their hands. "Bird," Jasper translated. Then the children made a whooshing sound and flapped their hands like wings. "Fly." Next the children made a clicking sound, followed by a clucking sound, and finished with a hoot as their hands dived down. "Attack." Then they made a hissing sound as they wiggled their arms around. "Snake." Finally they repeated the final line. "The end."

"He's right, Emmett, that rhyme is fairly obvious," I added. Emmett's dislike of the song was mostly based on the fact that it was not in a human language, which was a bit judgmental given that we were no longer human ourselves. Jasper thought it was educational for his children to learn ancient languages and I agreed.

"Still, I don't like it," Emmett said before the three of us fell into a long silence filled only with the sounds of Allison and Jackson's song and Eliza's wood slicing.

As we lay there, a dark gloom began to settle on us, despite the sunlight that was still filtering down through the clouds. The gloom was obviously emanating from Jasper, who was missing Alice.

'Edward,' Emmett thought my name to get my attention, 'he reminds me of you. That time you left Bella for her own good, you were just as miserable as Jasper is now. It's hard to look at him and know he's so lonely without Alice.'

I moved my left hand, which was closest to Emmett, a fraction of an inch to indicate to him that I was listening and agreed. I had been trying to tune out my brothers out of respect, but now I dipped into Jasper's thoughts.

'Just another four thousand five hundred sixty-three days to go until Alice comes back,' Jasper thought to himself.

Great, Jasper was counting the days until Alice's return. Emmett and I would have to come up with something to get our brother off of this train of thought. As I was racking my brain with an activity that we could do with the children in tow, Emmett beat me to the punch and asked, "Remember back when we were in the States and used to lie around like this after a hunt, placing wagers against each other?" Reminiscing was certainly something the three of us could still do now that we had children.

"Which time, Emmett? It seems that all we ever did back then was hunt and make silly bets,' Jasper replied thinking back to when he was still fairly new to our family and the bet was as to whether he would kill the human who would be stopping by the next day.

When Alice and Jasper first joined us, we told the neighbors that they were older and had already finished high school, so that they could stay at home and get used to the new lifestyle. Things stayed like that for six months until Jasper's fist slip and for another four years after at the next house. After Jasper's second slip and yet another house Alice was ready for school, so she enrolled with the rest of us, but Jasper's eyes were still a burnt sienna from his last slip and no one thought he would be able to survive high school.

We considered telling the humans that Jasper was older again, but that would not work. Alice was so small that everyone believed the young age she was claiming to be. Eventually the humans would find out that she was dating Jasper and then it would look like she was being taken advantage of by an older man. So if Alice was sixteen, then Jasper had to be sixteen too. And if Jasper was sixteen, then we needed to come up with a good excuse as to why he was not in public school while the rest of us were.

Humans decide to home school their children all of the time. But what they do not do is home school one child and send the other four off to public school. When the local principal got wind of this, he immediately jumped to mental illness as a conclusion and sent the school psychiatrist to pay Jasper a surprise visit. But with Alice on our side, no visit could truly be a surprise.

So the night before said visit, Emmett and I took Jasper out hunting until he was so full he could not drink another moose. And afterwards we sat down on three boulders in the woods and placed bets as to whether or not the psychiatrist would escape with his life. Emmett and Jasper were both sure that the psychiatrist was a goner, because no matter how much animal blood was inside Jasper, the human would still smell outrageously good in comparison. But I had seen Alice's visions in which the human invariably survived, so I had bet against them.

Alice had spent days pouring over possible outcomes with Jasper until they settled on a plan which would not send anymore humans their way. If Jasper claimed to be mentally ill, then the psychiatrist would be back and attempt to treat him. If Jasper was violent or disturbed in any way, the psychiatrist and the police would be back. It was only when Jasper decided to play it wide eyed and innocent that the humans let him be.

So when the psychiatrist came, Jasper pretended to have grown up in a cabin in the woods in Texas, where he was completely cut off from technology. Now that we had adopted him, he was curious, but wary, of all our new-fangled fifties' technology. This act started only moments after Jasper greeted the man with a, "Howdy. It's a pleasure to meet you, Sir," when Alice called Esme on the telephone. "What in tarnation is that racket?" Jasper had asked when he heard the loud ringing.

"It's just the telephone, dear," Esme had said as she walked over to answer it, because back then we still had landlines. "Remember we told you that we talk to people who are far away with it?"

Jasper nodded, but when Esme picked up the phone and pretended to greet Carlisle, Jasper pretended to grow concerned. "Is there something wrong? Did Alice get hurt riding on that motorized horse she took to school?" Jasper interrupted.

"Alice is fine, Jasper. Cars are perfectly safe. Carlisle was just calling to say that he'd be home late for dinner," Esme soothed hanging up the phone.

And after that Esme had left Jasper to talk to the human alone. Not only had the human survived, but Jasper had done a good enough acting job to convince him that nothing was wrong and that there was no reason for a return visit, thus giving Jasper another seven years to acclimate to our lifestyle. It was a slip on Emmett's part that had caused us to move that time, making Jasper feel better about himself and much more confident.

But it was a lot worse for Jasper after that move, because Carlisle wanted a human to come to the house regularly to interact with Jasper in order to prepare him for the possibly of actually going to school with all of us. Carlisle and Esme had let it be known that Jasper was being homeschooled due to an abusive past, so another school psychiatrist came out right away. Jasper did well with the new arrangement for a time, convincingly making up plenty of stories about beatings and whippings, while showing off some of his scars to prove it, but he slipped a few months in. The human did not survive and we had to move.

Jasper was thinking about all of this and his thoughts were growing darker and more depressed as he began to remember how upset Rosalie was every time our family had had to move on his account. I knew I needed to change his train of thought quickly, but I could only think of one other bet. "Remember that time when Esme yelled at us and forbid our bet?" I asked. Esme had banned betting on who would make the worst father.

"Yeah. I still think Jackson and Allison should've taken one look at all of those scars and been scared to death of Jasper," Emmett replied, chuckling.

Not long after Emmett and Rosalie disgorged their set of eggs, the three of us had gone hunting. And as was customary, after our hunting trip, we sat around and contemplated what was new in our lives, namely the fact that all three of us were expectant fathers. And like all of our discussions, this one had broken down into placing bets, followed by wrestling.

Emmett had bet that Jasper would be the worst father, because of his violent past. Jasper had bet that I would be the worst, because both of mine would be mind-readers. I had done all right with Nessie, but had not had to guard my thoughts. Once my children were born, I would be getting payback in double for all of the mind-snooping I had done.

And while Jasper thought that I would be unable to control my thoughts around my own children, I thought Emmett would be the worst father. I had already seen some of Alice's visions in which Emmett picked up one kid or the other and bounded around like an over-sized goof-ball. And just that morning Alice had seen a vision of Emmett being distracted by one kid as the other took the opportunity to chew on a chair leg.

Of course I now knew all the kids did it, but back then I thought the furniture eating would be localized to Emmett's monsters due to bad parenting on his part, so I had been convinced that Emmett would be the worst father of the three of us. Alice even agreed, although Bella sided with Emmett against Jasper, while Rosalie took Jasper's side against me. But when Esme and Carlisle found out about the bet, they nixed it and ordered us to stop betting about our children. And if Carlisle was not on board, then he would never order a payout, so there was no point continuing with that line of bets.

This change in conversation had indeed helped Jasper, who was now thinking, 'Eliza hears every thought Edward has ever had, so there is no way that he can filter his thoughts for her. I'm sure I won that bet. It's too bad Esme won't allow a payout.'

"I disagree, Jasper," I interrupted. "Since Eliza hears every thought I have ever had and there is no possible way for me to shield my thoughts, then that renders your bet null and void. You can only possibly win if I think nasty thoughts in front of Masen, which I have not. It is still anyone's game." I wanted to add on something about never betting against Alice, but I stopped myself before I could remind Jasper of his depression over his missing mate.

'So Eliza can hear every thought I had last week with Rosalie even if I don't think about it,' Emmett thought before running through some of those thoughts in his head.

"Stop it, Emmett! Thinking about it while she is here will draw attention to it!" I hissed.

"No, it doesn't matter. Alice said," Jasper replied as a large flock of ivory gulls flew overhead. The birds distracted him from his train of thought, but he had been thinking about a conversation he had had with Alice where she specifically told him he only had to watch his thoughts around Masen, because it was useless to guard thoughts around Eliza.

We all watched as Allison and Jackson jumped into the air and caught a bird, each. "Wow! Now that's pretty neat!" Emmett exclaimed.

As we watched Allison and Jackson holding their screeching birds, Eliza made the tweeting and whooshing sounds from the nursery rhyme in addition to the hand movements to indicate flying birds. "Very good, Eliza," I encouraged.

Jackson straightened the feathers of his bird, which was in danger of having a heart attack it was panicking so, and held it out to Eliza saying, "It doesn't taste good."

"Want some, Angie?" Allison asked holding her bird out to Angel Rose in offering. Angel Rose was a bit of a mouth full, so the other children had taken to calling her Angie.

Angel Rose declined Allison's bird, just as Eliza's bird died of shock. "No?" Allison asked taking her bird back and biting its neck. Once the small amount of foul tasting blood was gone, Allison tossed the bird into the tundra and Eliza followed suit with the other bird.

"I think the kids are thirsty," Jasper said thinking about how thirsty he would have to be to drink bird. He would rather starve to death than drink a reptile.

"They seem to like live meals. There are seal holes just north of here," I suggested thinking about how this day could turn into a hunting expedition after all.

"Let's go!" Emmett said excitedly, already standing up and tucking his child into one of those baby carriers which were worn around the front. Emmett and Rosalie called it a snuggly, but the rest of us called it lazy.

We each picked up our children and ran to the seal holes. It was exhilarating to feel the wind in our hair and I could tell the short run eased the tensions in our little group. Running would always be one of life's simple pleasures, but we only caught one seal, which Jackson and Allison shared, so we went back to my place for more blood.

"What's with all the different kinds of cups, Edward?" Emmett asked rifling through my cupboards and pulling out a metal one, as I pulled out four bags of blood.

"I'm trying to teach Eliza not to bite through plastic when she drinks. If they can learn to use human cups, then we will not have to keep special ordering the metal ones," I said handing Emmett a bag of blood for Angel Rose.

He quickly poured the blood into the cup and handed it to his daughter saying, "Here you go, Ro." Ro being Emmett's nickname for his daughter.

"Plus this type of human cup can screw right onto the bag, saving a step," I continued. As I spoke, I demonstrated, handing the finished plastic cup to Eliza.

Eliza bit off the plastic nipple and guzzled the blood, causing Jasper to laugh and Jackson, Allison, and Angel Rose's eyes to turn black. Allison and Jackson would have attacked if Jasper was not holding them so tightly and soothing their bloodlust. As for Angel Rose, she took her bloodlust induced aggression out on her metal sippy cup and mangled the lid as she ripped it off in order to lick the inside. And since Jasper's laughter was contagious, we all joined in, despite the fact that I did not think it was funny in the least and the children had a bit too much blood on their minds to appreciate the humor.

Eliza had blood all down her dress, so I tossed it out and changed her into a spare set of clothes. We kept clothes in the kitchen for just this type of occasion, but Bella would probably be mad at me when she finds out how careless I was with three other babies present. Eliza could have gotten hurt if Emmett and Jasper had not had their children under control.

"Let me show you how it's done little brother," Jasper said grabbing two more plastic cups and pouring blood into them. He left the lids off and handed the open cups to his children saying, "Be careful, there's no lid." Jackson and Allison, being older than the others and loath to spill the precious fluid, quickly engulfed the blood without getting a spot on them, before proceeding to lick every last drop from the unharmed cups. Their cups, unlike Eliza and Angel Rose's, were left in such pristine condition that we would get another use out of them.

"No fair," I grumbled thinking about how Alice was not even around to impress.

"You got schooled, Edward," Emmett teased and Jasper just smirked, his smugness leaking out.

Emmett continued teasing me as we washed the undamaged sippy cups, tossed out the damaged ones, and cleaned up the rest of the mess from the meal. He was even still on a bash-Edward trip when we all sat down in my living room. Allison and Jackson sat at Jasper's feet playing their game with a click, clack, stomp, neigh, while Angel Rose was content to snuggle into Emmett.

"Eliza's stressed out again," Jasper said tossing me a few chew sticks from their usual spot on the coffee table. We never had coffee there, so maybe we should change its name to the chew stick table.

"Thanks," I said handing Eliza the two sticks.

Eliza readily accepted the sticks and began to chew while my brothers and I talked and ribbed each other good-naturedly. But we were interrupted five minutes later when Eliza, having chewed evenly spaced grooves into one stick, began rubbing her sticks together in rhythm like a rasp. I had bought her a real rasp before, but it had not survived its use as a weapon, thus explaining why she was forced to make her own whenever she wanted one.

As Eliza played, she began to kick her feet against my stomach making a loud drumming rhythm. Just as her song was beginning to take form, Jasper recognized the beat and a fuzzy human memory filled his head. He was a boy sitting in between his older brother and younger sister as his grandfather played the guitar and sang this song. He was fixated on trying to remember his brother and sister's names, but Eliza had what she wanted. "Yes!" she cried pointing at her uncle.

"Fine, I'll get my guitar out," I said, going to the closet and retrieving said guitar. I instantly began to strum along, pleasing my daughter immeasurably.

"Did Eliza just pick a song she likes out of Jasper's memories?" Emmett asked unnerved.

"Guess so. Jackson, can you look for when my grandfather played that song to me?" Jasper requested. "I can't remember my brother and sister's names for the life of me."

"Who are you kidding? You can't even remember how many siblings there were," Emmett teased, but Jackson nodded and began to search the past.

"Joseph and Lidia were next to you. Mariam and Elijah were sitting next to your mother," I answered as I saw Jackson's vision in perfect clarity.

"So there were five of us?" Jasper asked thinking about how much Allison and Jackson reminded him of Joseph and Lidia, but he could not remember his other two siblings at all.

"Yes and all of them had blond hair, but only Lidia and Joseph had blue eyes. You, Mariam, and Elijah had your mother's brown eyes," I added as I played. I was fairly certain that this list of siblings was not complete, because his mother seemed to be pregnant at the time. But this was still more information than Jasper had had before and I did not want him to dwell on it too much and risk his depression, so I started singing the words to the song.

Just as I finished singing the song with Eliza by my side on the chew stick rasp, I heard Rosalie and Lillian's thoughts approaching the house before I heard the footsteps. I figured it would just be Bella and Rosalie home after a day of girl time, but then I caught Esme and Carlisle's thoughts not far behind. They had heard the music and come for the party.

'I want Super Massive Black Hole!' Masen announced before he even got in the door.

For some reason Masen loved music from the early twenty-first century, with that particular song being his absolute favorite. As soon as the greetings were over I switched to my electric guitar and honored Masen's request. I did several songs after that, but around ten that evening I put the instruments away, hoping everyone would take the hint and clear out.

But the impromptu party lasted a while yet, with all of the kids playing carpet surfing. Carpet surfing was a game Jackson had made up after running out of cardboard to use as a snowboard. It was something like playing on a slip-n-slide, except for on carpet using vampiric speeds to thwart the friction. It was hard on both clothing and the floor.

When Jackson first invented the game, Alice tried to switch out the carpet for a smoother surface, like hardwood or a plastic mat, but Jackson refused. He said the friction was needed for the sport, so after he tore up his first carpet, she recarpeted the room and added a long but narrow throw rug with a Jackson approved texture. These rugs now ran the length of the nursery room in the main house, as well as Alice and Jasper's living room at their house.

We had one of these carpet surfing rugs in our closet, because Masen and Eliza had caught onto the sport, so while I was playing my guitar, Bella had pulled out the rug for the children to play. Carpet surfing was only allowed on said rug, so all we had to do was change out the rug when it wore out, which occurred about twice a month. And as for the damage carpet surfing did to clothes, Alice always thought that clothes were one time use items anyway.

Since Aiden and Carl could not yet walk, they could not carpet surf by themselves, so Eliza and Jackson were each taking one of Aiden's hands, while Allison and Masen had Carl's hands. The two toddlers would run with the baby in between them and then the three of them would dive down onto the carpet and glide along until they reached the end, hopefully stopping before they went through the wall.

Carpet surfing was fun while it lasted, but then Aiden had a close call with the wall, which barely survived, so Bella and I rolled up the mat hoping the party would die down soon. Allison and Masen retired to a corner, resuming their usual game of whatever the two of them think about behind his shield. Jackson went over to where Emmett was playing with Lillian. Emmett was spinning around in a circle at vampiric speeds, just like he used to do with Jackson during the brief period of time that they were together in the States.

Given Jackson's penchants for extreme sports, it was not surprising that he wanted to join in the fun. What was surprising were the thoughts running through his head as he requested that Emmett, "Pick up please." Jackson was thinking that he wanted to get a better look at the baby in Emmett's arms, and for once, the fact that Emmett tucked him into his other arm while continuing to spin, was just an added bonus to being so close to Lillian.

"So, Rosalie, is having your own baby everything you ever dreamed?" Bella asked with a smile as she looked adoringly at Angel Rose, who was in Rosalie's arms.

"Yes, it's absolutely amazing. Lily and Rosita are everything I could've ever wanted and so much more. I loved having Larissa and Nikolai and every minute was a dream come true, but it was over so quickly, so I'm really looking forward to having the next hundred years to really enjoy my babies without them growing old before my very eyes," Rosalie answered kissing Angel Rose on the forehead. Lily was the obvious nickname for Lillian, while Rosalie was currently favoring Rosita as a nickname for Angel Rose.

"Believe me, sister, after fifty years of the same obsessions, you'll wish your children grew a little faster," Jasper said indicating Jackson and thinking about carpet surfing.

"You have it easy, Jasper: your children are so well behaved and never try to take each other's heads off," Bella replied.

"True. My babies are perfect," he replied, smiling.

"You have so much to look forward to, Rosalie: the first time they break through the wall, the first time they eat the furniture, the first time they need their stomaches pumped, the first time they bite your finger off…" Bella trailed off wondering why this last one had not occurred yet. Angel Rose was four months old, while Lily was six, which should have been plenty of time for them to decimate their parental units' appendages.

"Not to mention the first time they call you Momma and kiss you and tell you they love you," Jasper added in, deliberately leaving out the first time they bite your ear off.

"And when they eat too much and vomit blood all over you," Bella added. This was one Rosalie had already experienced, so she cringed particularly at this last suggestion.

"Come on and give her a break guys! Rosalie, you're a wonderful mother and I'm sure that the vomiting blood is no problem for you," Esme said as she came over and kissed Angel Rose on the forehead.

"Thanks, Mom," Rosalie said hugging Esme.

"You know I only tease because I love you so?" Bella asked giving her sister a hug as well. "Now it's midnight, so you know the drill: you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

And with that the party finally ended and I had some quiet time with my wife and our two beautiful children.


	27. Chapter 25

Emmett's POV:

Rosalie and I had gotten our two lovely daughters Lillian and Angel Rose, or as I liked to call them, Lily and Ro, ready this morning, and now the four of us were waiting in the nursery of the main house for the arrival of the others. Today it was my turn to watch the little vampires; my first time being left with all eight of them, alone. I had been on baby detail before with Rosalie and we had always worked the nursery as a team, but today there would be no Rosalie, nor anyone else for that matter, to help me.

Bella and Edward were on the schedule for personal time, so Rosalie was needed to help Esme, Carlisle, and Jasper work on the new synthetic blood facility, which would streamline the manufacturing process and increase our production capabilities. Four pairs of hands were required today to raise the roof. It could have waited until Bella and Edward were free, but I told them to go ahead and that I would watch the children solo. How much trouble could eight babies be?

Lily and Ro were such sweet easy babies. They sat on the rug quietly looking at picture books. Lily was more adventurous and she was always asking me to pick her up and swing her around in the air. My Ro was tamer and was content with cuddling.

Lily called for my attention from her spot on the carpet. "Up."

"Okay sweetie," I said picking her up and tickling her.

I was still tickling Lily when Jasper came in with Allison on his back and Jackson in his arms. Jackson was easy going, but his visions could be disturbing. Allison, however, was much more of a challenge to watch. She liked to get my goat, to get me upset, and to make me mad, because she thought it was funny.

"Now, Jackson, I don't want you looking for visions of Auntie Bella and Uncle Edward today. Got it?" Jasper asked his son. Jackson could see the past, including the recent past, which would be highly inappropriate later on today in Edward and Bella's case, because they were scheduled for personal time. I know what Rose and I did yesterday during our personal time…

"Okay. No Stupid Uncle," Jackson answered. He had taken to calling Edward Stupid Uncle after hearing Allison use the endearing term.

"No, Jackson. His name's Uncle Edward," Jasper corrected kissing Jackson's forehead and placing the child on the rug next to Ro.

"Okay, Daddy."

"Emmett, Allison isn't going to be any trouble today. Are you Ali?" Jasper asked taking the child off of his back.

"No. I'm gonna sit quietly reading The Bible and _not_ call Uncle Emmett Stupider Uncle," Allison answered. She had given me the nickname Stupider Uncle to differentiate Edward and me.

"You're reading The Bible? That's great!" I exclaimed. I had a religious upbringing and I thought that it was important to share the Lord with my children, despite their vampiric heritage.

"Yes, it's a three hundred fifty year anniversary special illustrated edition of the original version," she said holding out a huge copy of On the Origin by Charles Darwin.

I must have had the dumb-founded, exasperated look on my face again, because Jasper put his hand on my shoulder and sent waves of calm. "Don't let her get under your skin. She's just doing it because she thinks your reactions are funny. Stop reacting and she'll stop taunting you," Jasper advised.

"Okay, I'm sure you're right. Allison, that's a very nice book," I said, hoping that that was enough of a non-reaction. Jasper was much better in dealing with the bloodsuckers than me.

"Thanks," Allison said as the smile faded from her face. A non-reaction was clearly not the one she was hoping for.

"Have a good day and I love you both," Jasper said kissing Allison on the forehead and placing her next to Jackson.

"Are you ready, Rose?" Jasper asked my wife.

"Sure," Rosalie said after kissing Lily and Ro. She then gave me a much longer kiss. "See you soon, Em."

Just as they were leaving, Carlisle came down stairs with Carl and Aiden. "Where's Esme?" I asked.

"Already at the building site. Be good you two," Carlisle said before kissing Carl and Aiden.

After he left, I made the children sippy cups of blood. We had a blood warmer and a small refrigerator set up in the nursery, along with a cabinet of large sippy cups, so that I did not need to leave the room to do so. The blood warmer was just a hot water bath in which the units of synthetic blood had to be placed. Once warm, simply open, pour, and refill as needed. As for clean up, place the sippy cups and empty blood pouches in an air tight disposal unit to be dealt with later.

Air tight was a must, because the smell of blood in the air was not conducive to well behaved little monsters. Thirsty babies were a nightmare, but hopefully well-fed babies would be content and peaceful. And it was their usual feeding time, as we had them on a pretty strict schedule, so I passed out the sippy cups, and refilled each once.

Allison seemed to be behaving, sitting quietly as she drank. And when she was done she took her book to the corner to read. I was still eyeing her suspiciously when she asked, "Uncle Emmett?"

"Yes, Allison?"

"My throat hurts. I'm still very thirsty."

"Don't fall for it, Em," Edward said as he walked in carrying Eliza in one arm and Masen in the other. The monsters were always trying to gorge themselves on blood, but since their stomachs were still small, they would vomit if they drank too much.

So Allison was lying again in an effort to get more blood. "Thanks. How's it hanging?" I asked.

"Ugh! Emmett, please!" he exclaimed, responding to my questioning thoughts about his plans for the day.

'Where's Bella?' I asked in my head knowing that my brother would be able to hear.

"At home waiting for me," he answered, placing his two demons on the floor as well. "Now I don't want any fighting. Eliza?"

"Okay, Daddy."

"Good girl," he said, kissing her cheek, before looking at Masen. He raised an eyebrow, questioning Masen's unspoken reply. They continued to stare at each other in silent communication for over a minute before he kissed Masen's cheek as well and said, "Good luck, Emmett!" And with that I was left alone with all eight little leeches.

I decided that since I had to watch and entertain the bloodsuckers, I might as well teach them. Years back I had gotten a degree in education, so I decided upon story time as a normal human activity. There would be none of that nonsense with that snake language Jasper encouraged, so I started with Dr. Seuss.

Even Allison sat still and listened attentively as I read The Cat in the Hat. In fact, she was the best behaved child during story time. I caught Jackson, Eliza, and Masen watching one of Jackson's visions instead of listening to the story. And I had to stop Carl and Aiden from pushing each other a few times, because Aiden was not in a very peaceful mood today. Even Ro and Lily tried to crawl away to go play with toys once while I read, but Allison sat as still as a statue and did not say a single word the entire time.

But after half an hour and three children's books later, the inattention from my audience grew, indicating it was time for a change in activity, so I decided upon the rhyme game, because it was both fun and educational. Plus it was interactive, so hopefully the kids would not be so bored. Allison was a little more advanced than the others, so when she asked to be excused from the game, I let her sit and read her book by herself, as a little reward for her previous good behavior.

After I explained the rules of the rhyme game and gave several examples, I asked, "Who can tell me a word that rhymes with cat?"

'Frog,' "Frog," "Frog," "Bat," Masen, Jackson, Eliza, and Aiden answered simultaneously. The other three did not say anything, but looked at me like I was crazy instead.

"Good, Aiden, bat does rhyme with cat. Now which word do you want to pick?" I asked wondering why frog was such a popular answer in association with cat. I thought it might be a joke at first, but no one laughed, so that could not be it. Masen and Eliza were the mind-readers, so they were probably picking Jackson's answer out of his mind and copying him. But as to why Jackson would think frog rhymed with cat, I was stumped, so I chalked it up to something in one of those visions of his.

"Orange," Aiden answered.

"Korange," Allison supplied before I could explain that nothing rhymed with orange. I had not even realized she was paying attention to our little game.

"There's no such word as korange," I declared, never having heard of the word in my three hundred plus years of existence.

"Korange, the color resulting from mixing lavender and brown," Allison insisted.

That sounded like a legit dictionary definition… but, Edward said that she liked to lie to me because she thought it was funny when I believed nonsense. I wished he were here now so I could ask if Allison was doing it again. But wait! There were _two_ mind-readers here.

'Masen,' I thought. 'Is Allison lying about korange?'

'She's not thinking about that. She's thinking about translating On the Origin into Na'vi,' he replied telepathically, because he did not talk yet. Not at all.

'Why would her book need to be translated into Na'vi?' I wondered.

'To keep me out.'

Oh, that was right: Masen could only hear what someone was thinking at the moment. But, Eliza… Eliza could hear every thought someone has ever had. 'Eliza, is Allison telling the truth about korange?'

Eliza was clearly having trouble keeping a straight face, being as bad a liar as Bella. "Yes, korange is a real word," she replied before cracking up.

'You're a horrible liar,' I thought at her. "Allison, Eliza gave you away. Korange isn't the color resulting from mixing lavender and brown. Didn't you tell your dad that you were going to be good today and _not_ make fun of me?"

"Yes. Sorry, Uncle Emmett," she answered.

But although Allison's reply was both polite and respectful, Eliza and Masen both started cracking up into fits of hysterical laughter. 'Stupider Uncle,' "Stupider Uncle," I heard Masen and Eliza's respective statements.

"Allison! Did you just call me Stupider Uncle in your thoughts, _again_?"

"It was a slip. Honest. I'll just sit here and read my book. Please don't tell Daddy?"

I swear Jasper was the only reason the child ever behaved. He knew that she was a trouble maker when he was not around, but I did not think he realized just how much trouble she started. And if I did not have her father to report back to, Allison would walk all over me.

"You lied to me twice today and you called me Stupider Uncle. Daddy's going to have to hear about this. I suggest you try harder to behave. If you're really good for the rest of the day I'll tell Daddy you were trying. Deal?"

"Okay," she said, taking up her book, which was almost as big as she was.

That was when Jackson started screaming. Masen had moved next to him and was holding his hand, which was a sure sign that he had been communicating with the boy, because Masen always touched whomever he was thinking to.

"It's okay, Jackson. What's wrong?" I asked as I picked him up. But he just kept on screaming, so I tried another approach. 'Masen, what'd you say to him?'

'I asked him where my Mommy is. He was showing me a vision of Daddy hurting Mommy. Then he started screaming.'

'Masen! Jackson wasn't supposed to look for visions of your mom and dad today. They're having adult time.' "Jackson. It's okay. Uncle Edward isn't hurting Auntie Bella. That's just the way adults say they love each other," I said, thinking about Rosalie and what we had done yesterday on our day together.

'Stupider Uncle?'

"Masen, little dude. My name is Uncle Emmett. Think Uncle Emmett." I had seen Edward and Jasper do this and it worked for them.

'Ali says you're Stupider Uncle. Ali's _Always _right. Darwin!' Why did he have to copy everything his older cousin did and said? Allison started using Darwin's name in vain because she knew how religious I was. It really upset me that she disrespected my religion and now she had all the bloodsuckers doing it. Great. Sigh.

"Just because Allison says something doesn't mean you need to copy her. Now, what do you need?" I asked. Rose calls me soft because I lose arguments to babies, so I did not want to keep arguing with him.

'Why do you lay on Auntie Rose like that? Aren't you hurting her?'

Great, the mind-reader heard my thoughts. I hope he does not tell Bella and Edward or I am doomed. 'We lay like that because we're married and that's how we show that we love each other.' I tried to keep from thinking about it, but the thought, 'And it feels so good,' slipped out.

'Why does it feel good? It looks like it hurts.'

Where was Bella when I needed her? I really needed a shield in that moment. I was used to having Edward around and to trying to control my thoughts around him. But it was still hard. Thankfully little slips did not really bother him anymore, because he was used to it. But now his vampiric spawn picks up every little errant thought that pops into my head. I was doomed. Bella was going to rip off my head for thinking those thoughts in front of her kids. Then Edward will burn my pieces. Rosalie would avenge me, but that probably would not turn out too well for Rosalie, thus leaving my babies orphaned. Poor Lily and Ro.

'Why would Mommy and Daddy hurt you?'

"Because I'm not supposed to be thinking about those types of things around you. They'll be mad."

'I won't tell. But, why do you kiss Auntie Rose between her-?'

I cut him off with my thoughts, 'Hey! You aren't to think about that. It's none of your business where I kiss your Aunt. Why don't you go play with Lily?'

'Okay,' Masen thought at me as he went to sit next to Lily. Lily, Ro, Aiden, and Carl were quietly smashing crayons into their coloring books, because the crayons were too fragile for their rough grasps.

Masen took Lily's hand as he began to share thoughts back and forth. I wondered what they were thinking about.

That was when Eliza came up from behind Masen with a chair and smashed it over his head, turning the chair to a pile of wooden splinters. Eliza also had a shield like Bella, so she could sneak up on him. And she often used this fact to her advantage.

"Eliza! Why'd you do that?" I asked.

'Darwin, that hurts!' Masen projected as he started screaming. Screaming, crying, and laughing were the only actual sounds I had ever heard out of the boy. He could not possibly be legitimately hurt, because it was just a wooden chair, so I was sure he was being melodramatic.

"Stupider Uncle," was all Eliza answered in reply. She was not the most articulate of vampires.

'Eliza, you can't just hit your brother over the head with a chair. That's not nice. Say you're sorry.'

"Sorry 'Asen."

Masen had already forgotten and was holding Lily's hand again. And although he must have heard his sister with his vampiric hearing, he simply ignored her or answered telepathically.

"Stupider Uncle?" Eliza asked.

"Yes, Eliza?" I asked deciding to let the nickname slide for the time being.

"Why'd you and Auntie Rose take a shower together yesterday?" This was the longest sentence I had ever heard her utter.

"What!" I spluttered. I was sure I had not thought about that once today. How did she know? Oh wait… she can hear every thought I have ever had. Great. How was I supposed to keep this monster out?

At least four of the children were quiet and behaving well. Lily, Ro, Aiden, and Carl had taken it upon themselves to quietly resume their coloring, not in the least bit phased by the chair smashing incident. I guess you can get used to anything if it happens enough. Such nice babies. If only all of the babies were so well behaved. I sighed and stole another glance at the aforementioned vampires.

That was when I noticed Carl pick up a blue crayon and eat it! Yuck! What was this kid thinking? Vampires cannot eat crayons. I stared at him dumb-struck and watched him do the same with a green one as my mind wandered back in time to that day Rosalie had yelled at me for letting the children eat crayons in the future. It was only when Ro engulfed a red crayon that I unfroze from my musings and took action.

"No! Spit that out right now!" I ordered rushing over to the culprits. But it was too late, because Ro swallowed before I had gotten the words out.

I turned to look at the other two babies, wondering if they too ate crayons. I would have to ask Jackson. "Jackson?" I turned to Jackson only to realize that he was unresponsive. I was used to this from Alice and so knew that it was probably a vision.

Whenever Alice had a vision, I would turn to Edward to explain. So I did the equivalent and turned to Masen, the next best thing. "Masen?"

'Yes, Stupider Unc,' he thought, catching my disapproving thoughts and cutting the reply short.

"Masen, what's wrong with Jackson?" I asked as I heard the other children laughing on the other side of the room. Hopefully they were entertaining themselves without causing trouble.

'Nothing. He's having a vision of watching an old human TV show called Dexter,' Masen replied. I remembered that show from back in the day. It was about a human serial killer. Jasper did say the child preferred death, violence, and gore, but Dexter? That cannot be acceptable for a baby to watch!

"Jackson? Jackson, come on little dude. Snap out of the vision," I pled.

'He can't hear you,' Masen explained. 'He can only hear the vision.'

"Well, can you use your telepathy to get his attention?"

'Jackson! Stupider Uncle wants you,' Masen sent his thoughts to both of us.

Jackson finally snapped out of it, shook his head, and looked up at me. "Yes, Stupider Uncle?"

"I need your help. Can you look for a vision of Ro, Carl, Lily, and Aiden? I need to know who ate the crayons just now." They would have to be vomited back up.

"Sure thing." And with that, Jackson zoned out again, before quickly returning. "Just Angie and Carl," he answered. Eliza had mispronounced the name Angel as Angie and the nickname has been haunting me ever since. I preferred the nickname Ro for my daughter, but the other children always called her Angie.

"Whew!" I exclaimed, relieved that they all had not eaten crayons. Well, there was only one thing that could be done now. It was barely noon and I had only been watching the kids for four hours, but I would have to call in reinforcements. The synthetic blood facility would have to wait.

I pulled out my cell and dialed Carlisle's number. "Carlisle?"

"Yes, Emmett?" he replied.

"I need you to come back, because I need your help. Carl and Ro were eating crayons," I said, as I heard a particularly loud crash and the house shuddered as the laughter continued.

"What was that, Emmett?" Carlisle asked as I turned to see Eliza rise from the freshly created hole in the wall. Just then Aiden charged Lily, who activated her shield, sending Aiden flying onto the floor two feet in front of Eliza's hole.

"Lily's shield," I replied. "I've gotta go."

"We'll be right there," Carlisle said before hanging up. Hopefully backup would be here soon.

"Lily, Aiden, and Eliza, stop playing with Lily's shield this instant! It's _not_ a toy!" I exclaimed. The laughter stopped as I walked over to the source of the commotion. Now that I examined the floor more closely, it was obviously uneven and damaged beneath the carpet from the impact. Esme was going to kill me if Bella and Edward did not get me first.

"Why would Grandma kill you?" Eliza asked.

"I was supposed to be watching you when you three destroyed the wall and floor. She's going to be mad at me."

I could already hear the soft rushing sounds of vampiric footsteps in the snow and was relieved that help was on the way. Moments later Carlisle, Esme, Jasper, and Rosalie arrived. The look of panic on Rosalie's face was devastating and I could not believe that I had failed her. All I could think about was how disappointed in me she was.

Jasper sent me a wave of calm as Rosalie and Carlisle went straight to Carl and Ro, while Esme looked at the Eliza print in the wall. Then Esme looked down and noticed the uneven carpet and gasped in realization. Allison executed a perfect back flip, landing on Jasper's back as Jackson reached up to him with both arms. Jasper picked Jackson up, before turning to me and asking, "What happened, Emmett?"

"Allison lied to me, twice, and called me, 'Stupider Uncle,' in her thoughts, but agreed to be good the rest of the day. We never got that far," I started my explanation and Jasper nodded for me to continue. "Jackson had a vision of Dexter and of Edward and Bella being intimate; Masen put him up to it. Ro and Carl ate crayons, while Lily, Eliza, and Aiden were playing with Lily's shield in the house."

"Don't worry about Carl and Rosa, Carlisle will sort them out," Jasper soothed me. Rosa was another nickname for Angel Rose. "I think eight may be too much for one individual to handle. Maybe two should be assigned kid detail from now on."

Jasper was still effusing calm throughout the room and I was feeling grateful for his kind words, even though I knew this would never have happened if it was his turn to watch the kids. He always had everything perfectly under control when we came back for the monsters.

"I agree," Esme said returning from her assessment of the damage. "And we'll have to pull the carpet up to repair the underlying foundation. Maybe we should look into foam walls if the children are going to crash through them so often."

"Alice suggested making the walls out of a new material similar to that in bullet proof vests: it's strong and flexible, so it might be able to withstand the frequent impacts," Jasper informed our mother.

"Can we get it in large enough sheets?" Esme asked.

"Yes. And Alice said that Allison would be able to help reinforce it so that it'd look more like a wall and less like a sheet," Jasper replied.

And so Jasper and Esme continued to plan the renovations while Rosalie and Carlisle pumped Ro and Carl's stomachs for crayons, and I was never again left alone in a room with eight baby vampires. Rosalie said I was lucky she was still trusting me with our own two monsters and I agreed with her whole-heartedly on that one. I would not trust me again.


	28. Chapter 26

In the following chapter, Allison reveals some of her knowledge of the origin of life, and has previously shared her knowledge on the origin of the Universe. And while most people think that these subject are tied to religion, and Allison herself thinks that this means she has knowledge regarding religion, Allison's all-knowing power in no way gives her additional information on religious truths, because she only knows math and science.

Allison's religion, atheism, comes from her extremely logical personality, not her skill. But she is so convinced that her knowledge of the Universe confirms her religious beliefs, that not even Edward, with his ability to see within her mind, can tell that this is not the case. He does not even question her on it, even though his religious views differ.

Allison will not go unquestioned, as Emmett will challenge her in this chapter. But he will not be smart enough to put together a sound argument. This does not make Allison correct, it is simply meant as a joke that Emmett loses an argument to a baby. This also does not mean that Emmett and Edward are correct or incorrect in their religious views: my intent in writing this story is not to take sides in a religious debate, so although the characters all have their religions, they are in the same state of not knowing that everyone else is.

The only vampire in this story whose ability gives him any extra insight into the validity of one religion over the other is Jackson, because he can look to the past and see if the events described by a religion are true and accurate depictions of the past. This still does not give him proof that one religion is correct, only that some are incorrect. But Jackson is not in the least bit interested in religion, so he will never even bother to look for such visions. He is more than happy to go along with his sister Allison without question.

So please keep this in mind while reading the following chapter. Allison will continue to be the voice of truth and fact when it comes to math and science, but despite her skill, she does not know everything, and she may or may not be wrong in her religious views. And I know she can be annoying, but that personally trait just fits her perfectly, so try to look past that if you would and love her anyway. I know I do.

Edward's POV:

In the following chapter, Allison reveals some of her knowledge of the origin of life, and has previously shared her knowledge on the origin of the Universe. And while most people think that these subject are tied to religion, and Allison herself thinks that this means she has knowledge regarding religion, Allison's all-knowing power in no way gives her additional information on religious truths, because she only knows math and science.

Allison's religion, atheism, comes from her extremely logical personality, not her skill. But she is so convinced that her knowledge of the Universe confirms her religious beliefs, that not even Edward, with his ability to see within her mind, can tell that this is not the case. He does not even question her on it, even though his religious views differ.

Allison will not go unquestioned, as Emmett will challenge her in this chapter. But he will not be smart enough to put together a sound argument. This does not make Allison correct, it is simply meant as a joke that Emmett loses an argument to a baby. This also does not mean that Emmett and Edward are correct or incorrect in their religious views: my intent in writing this story is not to take sides in a religious debate, so although the characters all have their religions, they are in the same state of not knowing that everyone else is.

The only vampire in this story whose ability gives him any extra insight into the validity of one religion over the other is Jackson, because he can look to the past and see if the events described by a religion are true and accurate depictions of the past. This still does not give him proof that one religion is correct, only that some are incorrect. But Jackson is not in the least bit interested in religion, so he will never even bother to look for such visions. He is more than happy to go along with his sister Allison without question.

So please keep this in mind while reading the following chapter. Allison will continue to be the voice of truth and fact when it comes to math and science, but despite her skill, she does not know everything, and she may or may not be wrong in her religious views. And I know she can be annoying, but that personally trait just fits her perfectly, so try to look past that if you would and love her anyway. I know I do.

Edward's POV:

Five years later Bella, Emmett, and I were watching the eight children in the nursery room. Carlisle and Esme were having some personal time in the guesthouse, while Jasper and Rosalie were out hunting walrus, and Alice was still in the United States keeping an eye on the final two human hosts.

It was one of those rare times when seven of the eight children sat quietly watching their favorite television show, so the three of us adults had a little down time in between the madness. Consequently, Emmett and I had moved our chess set into the room and were playing a game, while Bella was talking to Allison, who still would not watch television.

Bella was shielding both Emmett and Allison's thoughts from me. Emmett she was shielding so that I could not cheat in the chess game, which was something he insisted upon in order to play with me. Allison was being shielded at my own request, because there were certain things I just did not want to know. Ignorance was bliss and reading the mind of a know-it-all was not conducive to such bliss.

Although I did not want to hear Allison's thoughts, I was still curious about Bella's line of questioning, so I was listening to Allison's answers audibly, as I waited for Emmett to make his next move. There was a difference between hearing something out loud and seeing the truth of it in Allison's mind. I wanted the summary of what she had to say, not the details, so I was content to listen to her words with her thoughts blocked off.

Bella had asked how life originated. I wanted to know the scientific explanation behind the origin of life, but I did not want to see said explanation in Allison's mind in all of the gory detail she possessed. It was one thing to hear it, but another to see it, and the topic came dangerously close to my own religious beliefs, so I had asked my wife to shield me while she asked Allison her questions today.

"Well, how much background do you have in the subject?" Allison asked Bella.

"I have a bachelor's degree in biology."

After pausing for a minute, Emmett moved a pawn forward in our chess game.

"So you understand Darwinian Evolution, right?" Allison asked Bella.

"Yes. That was mentioned in pretty much every class."

"Wait just a minute," Emmett interrupted them. "It hasn't been proven that life is subject to evolution."He had been brought up in a very religious family, so even now, he refused to accept evolution. Carlisle and I were a bit more modern and had accepted evolution, but had also maintained our religion. We believed that the two concepts were not mutually exclusive, so that it was possible for both to be true.

"Darwin!" Allison exclaimed. She had taken to using Darwin's name in vain, especially around Emmett, because she knew it upset him. "The definition of life is that which has heredity and evolves. Therefore, if it's alive, it evolves."

"Your reasoning is tautological. A definition doesn't prove you're right," Emmett argued. He was clearly making an effort to put together a sound argument, which probably had something to do with the frequency with which Allison had mentally defeated him in the past five years.

"What about the_ E. coli_ shown to evolve in the lab?" Allison asked him.

"Artificial manipulation by man. Doesn't count."

"What about the naturally occurring _Brassica rapa_ that evolves in the wild?"

"That may support evolution within a species, but not speciation."

"What about the hawthorn flies that diverged into the two species hawthorn flies and apple slash hawthorn flies when apple trees were introduced to North America?" Allison asked, smiling smugly.

"She's got you there, Emmett. Can we get back to our game?" I asked, wanting to end this conversation before it got out of hand. I used my bishop to take Emmett's pawn.

"Do you know anything about The RNA World and rybozymes?" Allison asked Bella as Emmett moved another pawn forward.

"I know what RNA is…" Bella answered.

"What about The Zinc World and genetic takeovers?"

I used one of my pawns to take Emmett's pawn.

"Never heard of 'em."

"How about rooting the tree of life along the bacterial branch using ancient paralogs?" Allison asked.

Emmett took one of my pawns with his bishop.

"What's a paralog?" Bella asked.

"A related protein resulting from gene duplication."

I took Emmett's bishop with my own.

"Then, no."

"What about Viral Eukaryogenesis?" Allison asked.

Emmett took my bishop with his knight.

"I've heard of viruses and Eukaryotes before…"

With Emmett's knight no longer guarding his king, I moved my queen and called, "Checkmate."

"Why don't you look some of those papers up? Then you can tell me how life originated: the humans already figured that one out," Allison concluded.

Allison's statement distracted Emmett from his loss. "God created life. Bella just needs to read The Bible," Emmett butted in. He liked to argue with the child and it did not matter how thoroughly she creamed him, because he kept coming back for more. I, however, deliberately avoided asking Allison these types of questions because I was uncomfortable with the answers.

"Darwin! Well, your God created the Universe, right? The space-time continuums?" Allison asked. I could tell from reading her face that she was just pretending to go along with this part, for Emmett's sake. She chose the nickname Stupider Uncle for him for a reason.

"Yes," Emmett answered hesitantly.

"Well, then your God was present during the first universal explosion or Big Bang, right?" Allison asked.

"Yes," Emmett answered again. I could tell he did not know where she was going with this, even though Bella was still shielding him from me.

"And it was also present at the first universal implosion?"

"Yes, He was present."

"And universal implosions are universal, meaning that everything in the entire universe, including parallel universes, is destroyed as the mass is compressed into an infinitely small space. Including Gods. So your God sacrificed himself creating the Universe and has been dead for thousands of trillions of years," Allison concluded.

"Huh?" Emmett asked, not having yet realized that he had lost. "But my God isn't subject to universal implosions."

"Darwin! Everything in existence is subject to universal implosions. Are you admitting that your God isn't in existence?"

"No," Emmett replied, still not understanding where he had lost this argument.

I was really glad I could not hear Allison's thoughts right now, as I did not want to know if this was true. She liked to dumb things down for Emmett and I had a feeling that she had left out a lot. I had caught her lying to him several times in the last five years because she thought it was funny. I wondered if she was lying now.

"Allison, how are we alive if our hearts do not beat?" Bella asked changing the topic of conversation. Emmett and I were both interested in the answer to this question as well, so we both listened in instead of starting a new game of chess.

"Lots of life-forms do not even have a heart to beat. Our heart is vestigial, because it is not needed, so it does not beat. Our venom is more than capable of distributing nutrients to our cells through diffusion without a pumping action," Allison answered.

"Okay, so why don't we need to breathe? Don't our bodies need oxygen?" Bella asked Allison, and again Emmett and I listened for the answer.

"Yes, we do need oxygen. But we get oxygen from the red blood cells in the blood we drink," Allison replied.

"But that can't possibly be enough given how active we are," Bella reasoned. "We must be burning off the calories like mad compared to a human, yet we need a fraction of the oxygen?"

"Our cells are more efficient than human cells. Most of the energy released from the oxidation of sugars in a human cell is either not harvested or wasted as leakage across the inner mitochondrial membrane. Our cells are more efficient in capturing the energy in usable form in the first place and our mitochondrial membranes are ion tight, preventing membrane leakage.

"Living cells must maintain an ion gradient across the mitochondrial membrane, but the ions leak across, reducing the gradient, so energy has to constantly be expended keeping the gradient up. But our cells have mitochondria with tighter membranes, so that the ions don't leak across and the gradient can be maintained indefinitely without energy input. Therefore we require fewer sugar and oxygen molecules to do more work," Allison answered.

"Okay. So if we do need oxygen, but less of it and we get it from the blood we drink, won't we suffocate if we don't drink blood?" Bella asked.

"Well we can also get oxygen from the air, so if we don't drink, we do have to breathe, just not as much as humans. And if we don't drink or breathe for an extended period of time, we'll eventually pass out until our bodies are re-infused with air or blood," Allison replied.

"How long does that take?" Emmett asked, his curiosity getting the best of him.

"A very long time: we have other means of producing energy that can hold us over for quite some time before we pass out."

"Like what?" Bella asked curiously.

"Well, energy's produced from the oxidation of reduced carbon molecules like fatty acids and sugars. Humans accomplish this by converting these molecules into carbon dioxide and water. But fatty acids and sugars can be oxidized to elemental carbon or carbon that in covalently bonded to four other carbon molecules, i.e. diamond. This is why our cells are so hard and shine in the light: they're full of strands of diamond that give strength to our cytoskeletons."

"So the carbon is deposited as diamond, instead of carbon dioxide, but what about the hydrogen?" Bella asked. "Hydrogen requires oxygen in order to produce water, the other product of metabolism."

"The hydrogen can be added to another molecule in the air we breathe, namely nitrogen. Eighty percent of the air we breathe is nitrogen, which is four times the amount of oxygen in the air. So after the oxygen in our lungs runs out, we use the nitrogen. When nitrogen is reduced fully with the hydrogen molecules produced during metabolism, it forms ammonia, which is released as a gas when we exhale. That's why our breath smells of ammonia after we hold it for a long time: our bodies have converted the nitrogen in the air to ammonia. So in order to pass out, our bodies have to be deprived of oxygen, nitrogen, and blood for an extended period of time," Allison concluded.

"What about the diamond? Surely it can't just build up forever," Bella reasoned.

"True. Although our cells need a certain amount of diamond in our cytoskeletons, the excess diamond must be further oxidized eventually. Once our bodies are re-infused with oxygen, the excess diamond that has accumulated in its absence is fully oxidized to carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide then leaves our systems in the same way as in humans: we exhale it. So even vampires need to breathe oxygen eventually in order to clear the diamond from our systems," Allison replied.

"What happens if we continue to be starved for oxygen, but not nitrogen, and the diamond just keeps building up?" Bella asked.

"Diamond build up is part of our aging process, because as we grow older, we lose our ability to fully oxidize the built up diamond. Over time, if the excess diamond isn't removed, our bodies petrify and turn to stone, and then to dust. The process occurs more quickly if we sit still and allow the venom to coagulate in our tissues, because if the venom isn't flowing, oxygen doesn't reach our cells, and diamond is produced even if we're breathing," Allison finished.

"So why don't we eat?" Bella asked yet another question, her curiosity being insatiable.

"We acquire all of the nutrients, sugars, fatty acids, and amino acids we need from the blood we drink. If we don't drink for an extended period of time, we run out and become weak. But it still takes years for us to fully deplete our stores and pass out from starvation," Allison replied.

"So if we breathe, but don't drink anything for several years, we'll eventually pass out due to starvation?" Bella asked.

"Yes, but it takes years, depending on the level of energy stores of the vampire. And since the starvation process takes so long, it never occurs during normal conditions," Allison answered.

Just then, Emmett's cell phone started ringing and I peeked over to look at his caller ID: it was Alice. Since our chess game was over, I nodded to Bella that she could stop shielding Emmett, because I wanted to hear what Alice was telling him through his thoughts. Being that Alice was still in the United States phone conversations comprised the majority of our communication with her.

As soon as Bella's shield stopped cloaking Emmett's thoughts, I overheard that Alice was calling to warn him that he was going to vomit up another egg. He was shocked, because he thought that he and Rose had been practicing safe sex all this time.

"Alice, are you sure?" Emmett asked.

I heard her answering reply in his thoughts, 'Yes. In three to five days you'll be puking.'

"What about Rosalie?" he wondered.

'Does Rosalie also have an egg… four children are a lot. Ro and Lily emerged just five years ago. We only managed five years before having an accident! We won't be able to handle two kids every hundred years! After ten kids, Rosalie will probably not even want to be in the same room with me, let alone touch me! The horror!' Emmett's thoughts screamed as his eyes burned from his inability to make tears.

After a pause, I heard Alice's answer in Emmett's thoughts, 'I can't see it. That either means she doesn't have an egg, or that her egg is not coming soon.'

Emmett cheered slightly with that news. "Okay. Thanks Alice, talk to you later," Emmett said before hanging up.

While Emmett stared dumbly at the cell phone in his hands, I turned to Bella and Allison, who were staring at Emmett and waiting to be informed of what was going on. "Emmett is with egg," I said relaying the news. "We are unsure as to whether Rosalie will also have an egg."

'Rosalie probably doesn't have an egg. Once zygote implantation occurs, which takes six to twelve months, the body stops making gametes. By that time, the partner usually has also swallowed a zygote, so there's no point in continuing to make gametes. If Mommy hasn't seen it by now, it's not happening,' Allison thought as Bella went over to comfort Emmett.

"Is that why we only produce one egg at a time?" I asked Allison.

'No. We produce and swallow multiple zygotes. The first zygote to reach the egg pouch in the stomach successfully implants, sending out a chemical signal preventing the organ from allowing implantation of other zygotes. Technically, the egg pouch can produce more than one egg at a time, if the eggs have identical chemical signatures; if they're identical twins.'

"Thanks. Emmett should appreciate that news."

"What news?" Emmett asked. He wondered what we had been talking about, but was too upset to have been paying close attention to us.

"Allison says Rose probably will not have an egg. Once your egg implanted, you stopped making gametes."

'That's good,' Emmett replied still dazed and confused.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"How can I possibly be carrying another egg?" he asked. 'Rose and I've been abstaining from certain activities… well, not completely, but more so than usual. And we've been washing after each time. And I even used those latex sheets for when I um… you know…'

I knew. I wish I did not, but it was too late for that. "Well maybe if we figured out how the accident happened, then we could prevent future accidents? Let's go outside so that the mind-readers do not over hear," I suggested.

'Okay. But Rose and I were taking precautions…I can't believe all those years of being careful were for nothing,' he thought as we exited the house and went just far enough away that Eliza and Masen would not be able to hear.

"Concentrate, Emmett. Eggs are disgorged a hundred years after ingestion, so think about what you and Rosalie did one hundred years ago and I will try to help you figure out your mistake," I offered.

"Thanks bro," he replied, starting to think about the night in question and his perfect vampiric memory came in handy with this task.

Emmett and Rosalie had finished the first round and then washed up to destroy the zygotes. Bella and I always washed more thoroughly than that, but they were in a hurry to start round two. Emmett and Rosalie were kissing in the bathroom, groping each other, before they made their way back to the bedroom. I really hated this. He was always thinking about this sort of stuff, which I found disgusting. Normally by now I would have tried to tune him out, run out of the room, or ask Bella to shield me. But I was trying to help Emmett, so I continued to pay attention.

Emmett had been using the latex sheet, just like he claimed. He was using it correctly… But he was also using his fingers. When Rosalie finished, he smiled at her, kissed her lightly on her nose, and licked his fingers…

"Stop! That was it. You licked your fingers," I announced, needing him to stop before I barfed up that seal blood I had earlier.

"But we washed first!" Emmett protested.  
"I know. I saw," I replied pinching my nose and trying to force the horrid images from my brain. "But you rushed the washing. There must have been some zygotes left."

Just then I began to hear Rosalie and Jasper's thoughts as they approached on the return from their hunting trip. They had each gorged themselves on walrus, which was rather tasty.

"Rose is on her way," I informed Emmett. She was about to find out about Emmett's little accident. "We should go back inside."

We went inside and waited the minute it took for Jasper and Rosalie to catch up with us in silence. After he explained what had happened, Emmett stood there in front of Rosalie, wringing his hands, waiting for Rosalie's response to the news that they were expecting another child.

'Will she want to keep him or her? Of course she wants to keep the baby; this's my Rose after all. The real question is will she want to keep me? Will she be mad at me for having an accident when we hadn't planned this? I know she wanted more children, but we didn't want to have them all at the same time…' Emmett thought.

"This is wonderful!" Rosalie finally exclaimed after taking a moment to process the news. She threw her arms around Emmett and interrupted his internal monologue with kisses, letting him know how pleased she was by this surprise.

"You're not mad at me?" Emmett asked in disbelief over the turn of events that had taken place today.

"How can I be mad at you? You're pregnant with my child! After I waited three hundred years for Lily and Rosita, how could I be upset over one more miracle in our lives?" Rosalie asked hugging Emmett tightly.

"Don't say the P-word," Emmett said cringing.

"I believe the correct term is parity, not pregnancy. Right Allison?" Jasper asked holding back his jealousy and Allison nodded. "So Emmett's in para with egg."

"Not helping man," Emmett replied as Jasper busted up with laughter. "Besides, you were in para, or whatever, with egg twice! And unlike me, you planned it. All of mine have been accidents."

"Yes, but it looked sexy on me. And my wife never once called me pregnant," Jasper teased. His jealousy was barely hidden under the surface, so he was disguising it with amusement.

"It looks sexy on Emmett too," Rosalie replied.

'I guess I deserve to let Jasper have his fun: I did spend a hundred years teasing him about being pregnant with Scryan, even though I was carrying Ro most of that time,' Emmett thought feeling unusually insecure.

"It takes a real man to be in para with egg," Bella added in, chuckling, because Jasper's enthusiasm was catching.

"Well we better get my big man home and off of his feet for the duration of his parity. Besides, you're drinking for two now Emmett, so we better get you some more blood. Are you thirsty?" Rosalie asked retrieving her first set of children from their spot in front of the television.

"A little," Emmett answered uncomfortable with all of the attention. When he had been with egg before, Rosalie had been as well and now that he was the only one in para in the room, he did not like all of the extra attention.

"Baby?" Lily asked from her perch next to Rosita in Rosalie arms, pointing at Emmett's stomach and curious about what the adults were discussing.

"Come, let's get you some nice polar bear," Rosalie replied handing over Lily and ushering Emmett out the door before we could continue to make fun of him.

"Yes Lily, Daddy's going to have another baby," I heard Emmett answer his daughter from outside. They were running, so moments later, they were out of hearing range.

As the family of four left Jasper thought, 'And I had so many more egg bearing related jokes that I've been saving up. Oh well, maybe tomorrow I can call him fat and ask if his feet are swollen or if he's craving bear, like he used to do to me.'

Even though those were human pregnancy symptoms which vampires were not subject to, Emmett had still used them to tease his brother. In fact, he had teased Jasper mercilessly about craving human blood while he was in para with Scryan. Jasper had not gotten any good parity craving cracks in against Emmett before, but now that he knew that Emmett had been in para that disastrous day as a teacher, he planned on payback. And no amount of Allison's insistence that vampires were not subject to parity cravings was going to ruin his fun.

"So you and Alice don't want to have any more children after the first four?" Bella asked Jasper, interrupting my musings. She still had a way of knowing the exact question someone did not want to answer, and asking it.

"Alice said that four's enough," Jasper replied, the humor gone from his voice and replaced with melancholy and apathy.

"But you want more?" Bella asked knowingly.

"Not now, but when the kids are in school, maybe. But Alice says the first four are gonna cause a lot of trouble together and be too much work," Jasper answered.

I had seen the truth of this statement in Alice's thoughts countless times before. The first two children were manageable, but the second two were infinitely more troublesome. Alice even saw Jasper's response to the possibility of having more children change from, "Eventually," to a firm, "Not right now," once the second two emerged, so I was inclined to take Alice's side that they should wait before making any more decisions regarding future children.

"Well maybe Alice will change her mind if you talk to her about it," Bella said with concern.

"Alice can't see it," Jasper replied as if this was the end all of any conversation. 'And we already talked about it.'

Jasper was so emotionally unstable at this point that his thoughts started slipping. He was always so careful not to think about private matters that were just between him and his wife that I had never before caught wind of this discussion he had had with Alice about what they would do if they had an accident. Now I learned that that conversation led to Alice's invention of synthetic venom and flow cells.

All eggs could be preserved indefinitely with fresh vampiric stomach contents. And since vampiric stomach contents were composed of just two ingredients, blood and venom, synthetic stomach contents could be manufactured by mixing the two. Alice had already created synthetic blood, so all that was needed was synthetic venom, and then she would have synthetic stomach contents, which could be added to a flow cell, and flowed over the egg, preserving it. And in the years since Alice and Jasper had had this conversation, she had perfected the synthetic venom and the flow cells, so they were now ready to go.

Apparently Alice had told Jasper that if they ever had an accident, they would put their egg into a flow cell, not a host, where it would wait indefinitely with no plans of retrieval. Jasper would only be allowed to implant an accidental egg into a host in the event that Alice was destroyed or changed her mind about not wanting more children. So with this new knowledge, I began to sympathize with my jealous brother: Rosalie would never tell Emmett not to implant his own egg. Nor would Esme or Bella do that to Carlisle or myself.

"That just means it will not happen soon. Alice cannot see into the distant future, so someday she may see more children," Bella replied.

"I doubt it. I think she only saw the first four because I wanted them so badly and she didn't yet realize how much work they were going to be," Jasper said thinking about the fact that Alice's visions were biased in his favor. Often his strong desire would overpower other possible options, so that she could only see the future he wanted. This was even true if there was a better possible future that he did not want, as she would still only see the Jasper approved future. And the only person her visions were more biased towards than her husband was Alice herself, so that a future she particularly wanted would overpower one that he wanted, explaining why she could not see the future with more than four children.

"But you and Alice have always been on the same page with everything!" Bella exclaimed.

"Not this." 'It's hard to be happy for Emmett when I wish I were the moron who had an accident. How hard is it to use a dental dam? But if I did have an accident, Alice wouldn't be as understanding as Rosalie,' Jasper thought to himself.

"Jasper, it has been a long time since you last visited Alice, maybe it's time you go again?" I asked my brother.

"Yes, seeing Alice'll get you out of this mood you're in," Bella agreed.

"Okay, I'll go next week," Jasper acquiesced.

"Good. And in the meantime, you should stay with us tonight," Bella offered knowing that Allison and Jackson were both capable of taking advantage of Jasper when he was all moody like this. Ever since that time when Jackson lost Jasper's ear, we have been making an effort as a family to not let Jasper alone when he was in a funk. It took Emmett and myself half an hour of diving into the river to find said ear, and Jasper did not even care that it was gone, he had had it so bad.

Jasper nodded and waited with us until Carlisle and Esme came back for Carl and Aiden. We informed our parents of Emmett's big news and then took Jasper and his two children home with us and ours, as Esme was happily thinking about getting yet another adorable grandbaby.

Four days later, Emmett disgorged his egg, which Rosalie still wanted to keep, of course. Alice called to tell us of her vision of the egg, which was another girl, Violet Emma, after Rosalie's human violet blue eyes. Violet possessed a talent that made her so beautiful that it was hard to look at her. It was similar to what Fred could do, but without the nauseating feeling.

We had met three escapees from Victoria's army, Fred, Shelly, and Steve, shortly after said army's defeat. Carlisle had insisted that our family track them down in order to explain the rules to them, because the last thing we wanted was another visit from the Volturi in our neck of the woods. Fred was the easiest to find, because Bree had given me directions detailing where to find him. As for the Shelly and Steve, Alice had seen where to look and when to find them.

Rosalie and Emmett had acted as our family's ambassadors on both such occasions and even stayed and spent a few weeks with each of them to ensure they learned our histories. The whole process went more smoothly and quickly than expected. The three escapees became friendly with our family, although none of them had agreed to witness for our family during the Volturi showdown, but that was because they had barely met us. Since then we have had several more friendly interactions with the three, so they were now on our long list of allies.

Fred had been the only one of the three with a talent. It was a mental talent that made others so disgusted that they could not look or even think about him. Violet's gift would be the exact opposite, but without the repulsion, because she would be so good looking that people would not be able to look at her. Her gift was not as strong as Fred's either, because she was definitely visible at all times and she could not extend her gift to others nearby, although one would still find themselves having trouble thinking about her when she turned up her skill.

So Emmett was going to be the proud father of a little girl with a gift similar to Fred's and the only problem was that we did not have a human host prepared for Emmett. And Bella and Alice had not made much progress in engineering an animal to be capable of carrying our offspring, not even with Allison's help. So we would need to find a human, and fast.

The good news was that before she left, Alice had left a large supply of her perfected synthetic venom, with instructions on how to easily make more. So Emmett's egg was placed in a flow cell and fresh synthetic venom slash blood automatically flowed over the egg. We would only have to switch in fresh bags once a week, so the egg could easily be stored indefinitely. The contraption was even mobile, giving us time to find another human.

Carlisle and I left the island, with the stored egg, to find a human host. Allison had revealed that we did not need to find a young human that had a hundred years left of life, but could use an elderly human. The old human would still live for another hundred years thanks to the presence of our parasitic offspring, so being able to use a dying adult and not having to find a dying baby made the selection process much easier.

When we set off to find another host, we took full advantage of the fact that Carlisle had been making regular trips to the local Inuit village to treat the indigenous humans, who did not have access to medical care. Carlisle was so happy for the chance to practice medicine that he treated the locals for free, developing a valuable rapport with them. A rapport that we would use in order to implant a new host.

Like all indigenous people the Inuit had legends and superstitions that warned them against us, but Carlisle and I hardly fit the profile. The first time we met the local humans we had been out hunting and came across an Inuit man named Keelut, who was in need of medical treatment. His dogs had run off leaving him in the snow to freeze. He had built an igloo, but he had already been out in the snow too long.

Carlisle and I warmed Keelut up, treated the frostbite, and returned him to his village. Ever since then, the villagers would contact us whenever they needed medical aid, but we could not cure everyone. There was a nice man named Nakkertok, who was dying of cancer although he was only forty and none of the drugs Carlisle had tried had worked. Carlisle wanted to bring Carl to help him, but the baby would freeze if he made the journey with us.

Carlisle and I visited regularly to check on Nakkertok and his progressing cancer and during our visit today, we told him we had a new type of medicine that could help him and that this medicine was his only hope. We gave him the egg to swallow and he trusted us. He did not even notice that it was not the size or shape of a typical pill, because all modern medicine was equally foreign to him.

We checked on Nakkertok regularly and told him that he needed to take it easy, with no hard labor, or his cancer could come back. He was so amazed by how quickly he recovered that he followed our instructions to the letter. We were sure that Violet would be safe with him in his village and we could not bring a human to our island, so we left him with his people. Luckily, the village was close by, so it was not a problem to check on him regularly, just as we had done with the other hosts.


	29. Chapter 27

Edward's POV:

Three years later it happened again: Alice called to say Esme would retch up an egg. Another accidental parity meant that Bella, Carlisle, Allison, and myself were going to have to put everything else aside so that we could expend all our efforts in inventing a vampiric birth control pill. Allison said that it was possible and relatively easy, but she thought everything was easy.

Carlisle and Esme could not even figure out how they had slipped. I had tried to help them, just as I helped Emmett and I went through that night with Esme; ew. And then again with Carlisle, which was even worse. I really hope that I will never have to repeat that experience in my entire existence. And despite the huge sacrifice on my part, there was nothing that they had done wrong that could be discerned from their memories.

Having exhausted Esme and Carlisle's memories of exactly a hundred years before the date of disgorgement, we then started examining the preceding and proceeding weeks, thinking that it was possible that the parity had not lasted exactly one hundred years. At first we still could not find the source of the contamination, but eventually we figured it out.

The problem was that we only had half of the story. Esme had swallowed Carlisle's gametes that night, but so what? We swallow our mate's gametes all of the time, but without the presence of our own gametes, zygotes could not form. But Esme's female gametes were present and when we looked further to the past Carlisle made the connection.

The week before, Carlisle and Esme washed up first, and then he contaminated his fingers with her oocytes, before touching his index finger to Esme's lip. She must have swallowed some of her own gametes then, which should have met with Carlisle's gametes in her stomach and led to fertilization, but they did not.

Earlier that week, Esme had attended a tea party as part of a hospital fundraiser. She had eaten human food, which she then had had to dispel from her body, along with her entire stomach contents, including any gametes which had been in her system at the time. That night with Carlisle, when she swallowed her own gametes, there were no male gametes present, so nothing happened until a week later when she ingested his spermatozoa. Fertilization then occurred inside her stomach, which was something we had not realized was possible.

When we asked Allison, she confirmed that intra stomach conception was indeed possible and was surprised that none of us had realized this fact on our own. Vampire gametes were preserved, not destroyed, by our venom. Since the stomach was full of venom, not stomach acid as in humans, gametes could survive inside indefinitely. And although vampiric intestines were capable of absorbing and recycling large quantities of gametes along with our partner's venom, trace quantities always remained in the stomach. Disgorging of the stomach's contents was the only way to completely clear old gametes out.

Two days after Alice's initial phone call, Esme vomited up her egg and placed it in the synthetic venom and blood flow cell. She was so excited that she called Alice immediately and asked her to search the future. Alice saw another boy, Adriel, with the power to bend the laws of physics to his whim. Everything was relative and he would be able to warp the space continuum to suit his needs.

But Adriel's abilities were not strong. He could warp the fabric of space around him to decrease the pull of gravity, but not eliminate it. He could increase or decrease momentum, but only by small increments. Basically, if falling, he could slowly glide down to the ground. Or he could make an object fall to the ground faster. He could increase or decrease his speed, the speed of others, or of objects. But he could not open wormholes or travel through space faster than the speed of light, like in science fiction movies.

When it came time to look for a host, Carlisle found an old Inuit woman, named Eohona, dying of liver failure. She was from a neighboring village and our local village told hers of the white doctors who had been treating them for free; and of Nakkertok's miraculous recovery. Word spread quickly and Eohona and her two daughters, Eureka and Aoreka, made the long trek north in hopes of curing her.

Eohona was seventy years old and suffering from hepatitis. If we had gotten to her sooner and given her modern treatments, she could have been cured, but now it was too late. She needed a liver, but she would never get one, because of who she was. Even if she had access to modern medical care, she still would not be eligible for transplantation, because there were no compatible livers available. There were plenty of livers around for Caucasians, but not Inuits.

No longer were body parts removed from the dead in the name of saving another's life. Organ donation was now considered barbaric and unsanitary, because stem cell research had led to test-tube organs. Organs were custom made to match the receiver, with everything from sheets of skin to hearts regularly being manufactured specifically for each recipient. It was a time consuming and costly process, but it was standardized and available for most people.

Because each human was different and unique, organ production started with the isolation of somatic stem cells harvested from the recipient's own body, which were then taken through a protocol that was dependent upon both type of organ needed and genetic profile. The common genetic profiles of all the major races were already thoroughly studied, with scientists currently researching the rarer profiles. But minor races, such as the Inuit, were ignored completely.

Inuit gene expression patterns were unknown, so even if somatic stem cells were harvested, the series of steps necessary to reprogram them into pluripotent cells, and then further into liver cells, was unknown. There were so few Inuits alive that financially it just did not make sense to find or develop cures for them, no matter how unethical that sounded.

Carlisle and I tried to grow a liver for Eohona using the most common protocol and her own cells. And when that did not work, we attempted other protocols and adjusted the procedure in the hopes of developing a new protocol ourselves, but neither of us was trained in that particular field of medicine, and even with Allison's help, we still failed. We had no liver to give Eohona and did not think that she would survive the wait associated with another attempt, so we gave her an egg instead. The next day she was cured.

Eohona wanted to go home, but Carlisle and I convinced her that she needed to stay in this village. We told her that she would only stay healthy if we kept treating her. We brought her pill bottles full of placebos to take and told her to stay inside and out of the frigid environment. We said that any strenuous activity, like the trek home, would make her sick again; we would say anything to keep her close by.

Carlisle and I were convincing and Eohona believed our word, so she and her family stayed, keeping Esme's egg close to home. Now both Esme and Emmett had hosts among the local Inuit. We had to make regular trips to check on Nakkertok anyway and now we just added checking on Eohona, getting both tasks over with at the same time.

The day after Eohona's implantation was a Saturday, and every Saturday, Bella took Masen to hang out at Jasper's house, while I went to Emmett's house with Eliza. As Masen and Eliza grew, Bella had decided that time apart from each other would curtail their sibling rivalry, and thus suggested separate play dates every weekend. She thought that they would feel special if they each had their own separate activities. And although I was loath to be away from my wife, I grudgingly agreed.

Masen would play with Jackson and Allison at their house, while Bella and Jasper talked about how much they missed Alice. Bella missed her best friend more and more every day and Jasper was still having a hard time coping without his wife, despite his frequent visits. It seemed the separation was harder for him than any of us had imagined.

We were all taking turns keeping Jasper company in the hope that it would help make the separation more bearable. And although my presence wore thin years ago, Bella and Jasper bonded in Alice's absence, because they now had something in common in that they had both endured the loss of someone they loved. Of course Jasper still saw Alice once a year and talked to her everyday, but he had been separated from her for eight years now, which was more than comparable to the six months in which Bella had been separated from myself.

And although I had also been separated from Bella for six months, Jasper had little patience for me, because he viewed the whole thing as entirely my fault and still thought I was a condescending prick. So I was sent away, and Bella became the only one of us that could truly relate to him, explaining why she made an effort at least once a week to visit him. Plus, Masen liked spending time with both Jackson and Allison, so he would beg to visit anyway.

And since Bella and Masen were off doing mother-son bonding and keeping Jasper from loosing it completely, I headed over to Emmett's with Eliza for some father-daughter bonding and a day with the girls. Emmett's girls were really sweet, which seemed to rub off on Eliza when she was in their presence. I was always surprised at how sweet she could be on our Saturday trips, because it was like she was a whole other person when Masen was not around. Do not get me wrong, Eliza was always a feisty little thing, and I loved that about her, but when Masen was gone, and she was not hitting or hurting anyone, she reminded me so much of Bella.

I could hear Emmett's roar of a laugh booming across the tundra as we approached his house. He was outside waiting for us, swinging Lily by the arms around in circles at practically the speed of sound. I could hear her giggles as the swinging ceased and Emmett scooped her up in his arms. And I could see the dents in the ground made by Lily's shield when he had let her go.

"Look Lily, Eliza's here!" Emmett exclaimed. It did not take much to excite my favorite brother.

"Hello Emmett and Lily!" I greeted, before going to sit on the bench next to Rosalie and Rosita.

"Hi," Eliza added from her perch in my arms.

"How are you little Rose?" I asked smiling at the toddler cuddled in Rosalie's arms.

"We're doing great. How're Bella and Masen this morning?" Rosalie asked. She usually made an effort to talk out loud to me when Emmett was around, because he hated being out of the loop.

"Same," I replied. Just then I was distracted from my conversation with Rosalie when Emmett threw Lily fifty feet into the air and caught her. "Rose, is that not a little high for a baby?"

"That's what I tried to tell him, but Lily loves it," Rosalie replied.

"So what's on the girl power agenda for the day? Nail painting, dress up, fairy tales?" Emmett asked catching Lily in his arms once more.

"I was thinking we could take the girls to the park," Rosalie suggested. Esme had built a little playground in back of the main house, complete with swings, slide, and sandbox.

"Sounds good," I said. And with that, the six of us were off.

Rosita, as the tamest of the girls, enjoyed the park the most, because Eliza and Lily both thought the human slide and swing set were lame. So Rosalie pushed Rosita on the swings while Eliza and Lily built a sandcastle. But moments later, Eliza was distracted from their epic sandcastle by a passing butterfly.

Insects, with their exceptionally small nervous centers that could hardly be called brains, did not know enough to be wary of vampires. They did not have red blood cells in their hemolymph, so we could not drink the stuff. But still, baby vampires were dangerous creatures and should be avoided, as evidenced by the fact that Eliza jumped five feet in the air in order to catch the butterfly in her hands.

Then Eliza slowly opened her hands, peaked inside, and grasped the poor creature by the wings in between her thumb and forefinger. She was about to eat it, with her head tilted back and her mouth wide open, when I stopped her, "No Eliza. We cannot eat butterflies. Their blood is no good."

Disappointed, Eliza proceeded to crush the butterfly between her fingers and examine the powder that rubbed off on her fingers. And while she was playing with her butterfly, Lily had picked up a rock that she wanted to shape into an arch for the castle. She was using her nails to carve out the curve in the middle.

"Ugh! Be careful Lily! I just painted those nails!" Emmett exclaimed, bothered by the nail destruction playing in the sand and sculpting the stone was causing. Vampire nails were not destroyed by such play, but the paint was being scraped off.

"You are so whipped Em!" I chortled.

"Well I can't believe how you neglect Eliza. Her nails look like she doesn't even have a father."

"Just because I do not paint her nails does not mean that I am a bad father!" I argued.

"Dude! Even Jasper does Allison's nails. Eliza's the only girl without a mani-pedi."

"Bella does not have one either," I pointed out. Alice and Rosalie had given her many, and although our finger nails did not grow or chip, the polish eventually chipped off and had to be replaced.

"Well, she's an adult. She can neglect personal hygiene, but your care of Eliza is atrocious! You can't even do hair right."

"Bella did her hair!" I growled back at his criticism. Eliza's straight brown hair had grown quite long, so Bella had combed it into a ponytail this morning.

"Rose baby! We're gonna have to give Eliza a make-over after the park," Emmett called.

"Of course. Don't we have to every weekend? Edward and Bella are inept at these things. Jasper tells me that he has to do the same for Masen every week," Rosalie replied.

"Wait! Jasper better not be giving my son a mani-pedi every week!" I hissed through my teeth. Bella always told me about her day, but with Bella and Masen's thoughts shielded from me and her lack of details, I never knew exactly what they did over at Jasper's house. That and Jasper was very skilled at hiding his thoughts from me, so anything was a possibility.

"Relax! He uses clear polish on the boys," Rosalie said nonchalantly.

"Does Bella know about this?" I asked. Bella hated makeovers so much that I could not imagine her consenting to torturing our son.

"She knows that Jasper gives him a bath and changes him into something Alice approved, but he always makes Bella watch his own children when he paints Masen's nails and cleans him up."

I pulled out my cell and sent Bella a text warning her of the impending nail painting, before turning my attention back to Eliza and our father-daughter day. Hopefully Bella would save Masen from any possible torture without further intervention on my part.

It was then that I heard Esme's thoughts indicating that she was inserting her sons into thick winter coats and announced, "Esme is on her way with Carl and Aiden."

The park was so close to the main house that Carl and Aiden could hear whenever anyone was outside playing in it. Conversely, I could hear any thoughts that originated from the main house. And as soon as Carl realized that Rosita was among the children out here playing, he began to pester Esme to take him and his brother outside. Esme had been trying to read them a story while Carlisle was away, but Carl would not stop his insistence, so Esme was bundling up her children and on her way out the door to join us.

"Excellent! Ro was asking to see Carl the moment we got home last night," Emmett replied.

"Yes, Jasper told us that there's an especially strong bond between the two of them," Rosalie added, still pushing Rosita in the swing at near human speeds.

"My daughters are only eight years old and already I have to beat the boys off with a stick," Emmett joked, referring to the fact that Jackson liked Lily. This meant that Eliza and Aiden were the only two babies on our island not to have developed a special bond with a child of the opposite sex.

Moments later Esme joined and greeted us, setting her children down. "Arie! Swing!" Carl immediately requested crawling over to Rosita. Arie was his nickname for her.

"Here you go Carl," Rosalie said picking up the baby and placing him in the swing next to Rosita.

"So what do you want to do today Aiden?" Esme asked her other son.

"Snowball," Aiden replied crawling over to an unsoiled patch of snow on the boarder of the playground. It had snowed again last night and the wind would occasionally pick up snow, creating little snow flurries, but it was not supposed to snow again until tomorrow morning.

Aiden balled up a wad of snow and threw it at Eliza and Lily, starting an epic snowball fight. Just because he could generate peace, did not mean that he always wished to do so. Sometimes he turned his power off and enjoyed a good fight.

With the five children otherwise occupied, Emmett and I sat on the park bench, while Esme walked over and helped Rosalie push the babies on the swings and talked. Mostly Esme and Rosalie gushed about what a dream come true the children were and how exciting Carl and Rosita's friendship was and the two mother hens were already planning play dates.

While the women chatted, I took the opportunity to catch up with my brother. "So I saw Nakkertok yesterday when I went with Carlisle to implant Adriel's egg. He was fine," I told Emmett.

"That's good," Emmett replied happily.

"Are you looking forward to having another girl around? That will make four girls and only one you in your house."

"Yes. Sure I wanted a son, but I already had Nikolai. He may have been human, but he and Larissa were my first two children," Emmett answered. I could tell that he and Rosalie would always love their human children, especially because of the sacrifice the humans had made in order to bring their biological children into this world.

"You're not worried about having three babies at the same time? I know Alice is scared to death over the prospects of having four…"

"No, Rosalie has this mothering thing down. If I can't hold my own, she'll pick up my slack, but I don't think that will be necessary little brother," Emmett teased me referring to my short stature.

"I am only three inches shorter than you! And it is not my fault that you are a giant," I replied.

"Whatever short fry," Emmett teased again. "Want to wrestle later?"

"Not tonight Em: I have to get Eliza back home after our girl's night."

"Worried that I'll cream you huh?"

"As if: you are so slow it just gets boring after awhile Em."

"That's only if you cheat. If Bella were to shield you, I'd cream you again, just like I did the last three times she shielded me from you," Emmett insisted.

"The second time does not count because we were not wrestling: you surprised me, came out of nowhere, and punched me without any warning," I countered.

"Whatever. I still won fair and square those other two times Bella shielded me."

"I am just not used to being without my sixth sense, so I was disorientated, causing my loss. With a little practice, I would still be able to wipe the floor with you. I just cannot tonight because Bella and I have plans."

"Plans huh? Like what? A make out session with the children home? Naughty naughty lover boy," Emmett teased me again.

"No. We cannot do that with the children home or they will rip each other's throats out," I replied. Alice had certainly warned me of the possibility enough to know not to take my eyes off of the two monsters, not even for a second.

"Then what kind of plans do you have? I bet you don't have any and are just making something up so that you can get out of wrestling with me."

Emmett was correct in his assessment, but I was not about to give him the benefit of letting him know that. So instead, I made up an activity on the spot, "If you must know, we are calling Nessie tonight."

"Oh… How is she?" Emmett asked chagrined that he had accused me of lying when I apparently did have something planned tonight.

"She is fine: she is still with Jacob in La Push. Humans do not notice age anymore, now that they are all living to be so old. And the Quileutes were always more lenient on the non-aging than other cultures, so she will be able to stay there indefinitely."

"You must miss her a lot."

"I do. This is the longest Bella and I have ever been separated from her, and it's not about to end anytime soon. But we can see her face when we Skype and talk to her, so it is almost like she is there with us."

"Almost, but she's not there to hug," Emmett replied knowingly.

"Exactly. Plus it is difficult hiding Masen and Eliza from her. We have to drop them off with Carlisle and Esme first, and then get through the entire conversation without mentioning what we do with ninety-nine percent of our time."

"I don't know if I could do it if I were in your shoes," Emmett replied sympathetically.

As we talked, the children continued to play. When Rosita tired of the swing, she and Carl switched to the slide. Every time I turned my attention to his thoughts, I caught him watching her and thinking about how pretty she was. Whenever I turned to her thoughts, I felt the pull she felt towards this boy. She obviously admired and looked up to him, even though he was only fourteen years older.

And while Carl and Rosita were doing typical baby stuff, Aiden, Eliza, and Lily grew tired of their epic snowball fight and decided to dig a moat around the giant sandcastle Eliza and Lily had made earlier. The cooperation Aiden made possible was impressive, because never before him had three baby vampires ever come together to work on one end goal. Eliza and Lily barely managed to work together in a team of two without fighting, but with Aiden added to the team, they achieved new levels of cooperativity.

After a few hours at the park, Esme took her children back inside, and I followed Emmett and Rosalie back to their house with Lily, Rosita, and Eliza. We had the typical clean-up session before Eliza would be declared presentable and not until then would she and I be allowed to return home; I knew the routine well. And now I had a call to Renesmee to arrange as well.


	30. Chapter 28

Jasper's POV:

The last fourteen years have been the hardest of my whole existence, because Alice and I were separated. Not even the year that I spent here in the Arctic, preparing our house, while she was back home with our newly emerged children, was as bad. Even though I had also been separated from my children that time, it had only lasted a year.

And that year I had made monthly trips back home to visit my wife and children. But this time, Alice could not come to me, because she had no one to watch our hosts in her absence. I could not bring my children down to meet her, or risk exposure. And I was loath to leave my children without either of their parents to go visit my wife. Sure the children had our other family members to care for them, but I just did not feel right leaving them.

Eventually, about a year and a half after she had left, Alice called Carlisle and told him that I was not coping without her. He showed up with Emmett and Edward and found me sitting on the couch in our living room while Jackson and Allison were carpet surfing and painting, respectively. They were each emitting love, joy, and mostly hope- Alice's signature emotions- so I was blissed out enjoying the emotional atmosphere too much to be paying all that much attention to what the babies were doing. Sure I was vaguely aware that Allison was doing something in the dining room and that Jackson was going through his carpet loop over and over again, but I was concentrating on their emotions, not what they were up to.

When my three family members entered, Carlisle seemed to be most interested in me. He came straight over to me, emanating concern for my wellbeing. "Are you all right son?" he had asked me. "Alice called and said that we should check on you."

"Yeah I'm fine," I had said calmly, trying to maintain my hopeful buzz without letting my family bring me down. I missed Alice so much that this was my only way of coping.

Emmett seemed to be most interested in Jackson. "Cool! When did you set up the carpet surfing ramp in a loop like that?" Emmett asked, referring to the fact that I had built an ovoid track in the living room and carpeted it. But instead of having it curve around the floor, the track went straight along the floor, curved up the wall, went straight along the ceiling, and curved down the other wall, so that it took up minimal room, while still having the upside down element that Jackson had requested.

"Jackson guilt tripped me into building that last week. He kept bombarding me with his love and longing for Alice until I caved," I answered, still chilling on the couch.

Edward seemed to be most interested in what Allison was up to in the kitchen. "Mixing rocket fuel is dangerous! It could explode and you could be destroyed!" Pause. "How did you get the pieces for a rocket?" Pause. "No! Absolutely not! The humans and the Volturi will detect us!" Another pause. "Jackson!" Edward exclaimed barreling into the living room, killing the vibes Jackson was feeding me.

"Edward, lay off my son: I need those emotions and you already stopped the emotions coming from Allison," I complained, upset that Jackson's hope and joy had been replaced with fear, apprehension, and guilt.

"Fireworks are dangerous, Jackson! You could catch fire and burn to ash! You are flammable! Your mother would be so disappointed in you if she were here right now. In fact, your mother said to tell both of you that she sees all and will be handing out timeouts when she returns," Edward continued his rant.

"What are you talking about? Carpet surfing's harmless," I defended my boy.

"Carpet surfing may be, but the fireworks he smuggled onto the island are not. And do you have any idea at all what your daughter is up to in the dining room?" Edward asked me with disapproval ringing in his words.

"Sure: Allison is painting a picture of a rocket," I answered. I had seen her bring down her oil paints before I had started to bathe in the emotions the children were feeding me.

"And I did Daddy, see?" Allison asked coming into the room holding up her still wet painting of a rocket. But guilt, fear, and apprehension had also replaced her own love and joy.

"Edward, I don't appreciate you barging in here and upsetting my children! They were perfectly fine painting and carpet surfing, unlike your children who would've ripped each other's heads off by now," I seethed coming down from my previous emotional high.

"Perfectly fine, Jasper? Jackson was planning on lighting the fireworks by himself tomorrow night! And Allison finished that layer of her rocket painting hours ago! She has been working on mixing up a batch of rocket fuel, to go with the rocket that she is making out of parts that she smuggled in! She was planning on launching it tomorrow night along with Jackson's fireworks!" Edward exclaimed, letting his outrage waft off of him freely. "No wonder Alice called today warning that something was wrong! Your children could be dead come tomorrow night!"

"What! Allison, is this true?" I asked my daughter.

"Yes, Daddy," she answered truthfully.

"How'd you smuggle in fireworks and supplies to build a rocket?" I asked, but Allison just stared at her feet and refused to answer me.

"Allison listed the rocket and fireworks as defense supplies and had the humans ship them in unmarked containers. She already assembled the more intricate parts and everything is boxed up in the storage room ready for tomorrow's activities," Edward answered for her. "Allison witnessed you and Alice ordering supplies before and took mental notes. She had your password and credit card number; although Alice said that she is changing all of the passwords and ordering new credit cards tonight."

"Is this true, Allison?" I asked again and she nodded.

"Son, you need to go visit Alice. You're no good to anyone like this. Esme and I'll alternate between taking Allison and Jackson and whichever one isn't with us will be at Rosalie and Emmett's, or Bella and Edward's," Carlisle said full of concern, caring, and love.

"Allison hates Emmett and Jackson thinks Edward's boring," I said, beginning to think about what my father figure was telling me.

"Well then Bella and Edward will take Allison, while Rosalie and I take Jackson," Emmett offered. "Jasper, they'll be fine.

"You'll be able to make the journey in only a day's time, because you won't have to stop to drink and you won't be carrying anything. Spend five days with Alice and then come back. You'll be gone only a week and your children will be fine here with their family," Carlisle added.

"Allison, will you be okay if Daddy leaves you here with Uncle Edward and Grandpa Carlisle?" I asked.

"Yes, Daddy. Can you tell Mommy that I love her and I'm really sorry for being bad?" she asked me.

"Of course, sweetie. What about you, Jackson? Will you be all right if I leave you here with Uncle Emmett and Grandpa Carlisle for a week?" I asked my son.

"Sure, Daddy. Tell Mommy I love her and am sorry too," he answered.

"All right, I'll go," I conceded. In hindsight I probably should have conceded before the children ordered a rocket, but it is what it is.

"Emmett and Edward escort Jasper out the southern cave and make sure he's on his way to Alice before coming back," Carlisle ordered picking up Allison and Jackson. "Come on, my grandchildren, let's go see what Grandma and your cousins are up to and have a nice long chat about fire safety."

And so after I kissed Jackson and Allison, Edward and Emmett escorted me off of the island and I went to visit my wife. I was only gone a week and Jackson and Allison were indeed fine in my absence, but I still did not like to leave them, so when my longing for Alice grew too intense again, after another year, Alice called and Edward and Emmett kicked me out again. On average, I went to see my wife once a year, but still, after fourteen years of this separation I was about to crack and was more than happy for the impending emergences of my younger two children and this nightmarish separation to be over.

I left the Artic a month before Alice scried the hatching. I had wanted to hold out until closer to the emergence date before going to see her, but Carlisle insisted I go early, because for the first time in over two hundred years, I lost control of my empathy; my emotions had run wild and wreaked havoc on everyone in the room.

When Carlisle, Emmett, and Edward arrived on the scene, they found me lying on the floor in my living room in the fetal position. Jackson was lying on top of me, with his jaw clenched tight around mine, frozen mid bite. He had come over to me to try to help me when he first felt the onslaught of anguish I was releasing, but when I did not respond to anything he did, and the emotional barrage increased in intensity, he bit me in a last ditched effort to get me to stop. It did not work, but I just added lethargy to the emotional mix, causing him to freeze as he was.

Allison was curled up next to me, still clutching my cell phone. While my son tried and failed to revive me, she had grabbed my cell and texted Carlisle for help. She pressed send just before she too froze from the potent mix of anguish and lethargy and the phone was still in her hands.

Carlisle had received the text, recruited Emmett and Edward, and the three of them had rushed right over. The emotional atmosphere when they entered my house was crippling and it was all they could do to walk over to where Jackson, Allison, and I lay on the floor, but eventually they made it and Carlisle managed to get through to me.

I slowly reined my emotions back in, and as the lethargy and longing lifted, Edward picked up Allison and Emmett picked up Jackson. It did not take Carlisle long to convince me that I was out of control with how much I missed Alice. I needed to visit her right away, before another incident like this occurred again, so the rest of the family took turns watching my two children and I returned to the States to spend time with my wife.

I spent the final month of Dava and Skxawng's lives with them and Alice, getting to know the humans that had fed and housed my unhatched offspring for the last hundred years. After our reunion sans children, which Alice and I took full advantage of, my second set of eggs emerged from their hosts. We brought Ashley and Scryan north immediately, not even stopping to hunt, because we wanted to reunite with our older two children as quickly as possible. Without hunting fresh animal blood, we made the trip in two days instead of three.

Packing enough synthetic blood for two babies for two days was not a big deal, but heating it up along the way was. We had taken spare packets of blood with us when we made the trip north with Allison and Jackson, but we had not used them, because our emergency plan involved stopping to build a fire to heat up the blood. If it were ingested at storage temperature, the babies' core body temperature would drop too low. Thus it had to be heated up, which was why Alice had perfected a travel sized blood warmer that warmed up the blood and saved us the extra time of hunting.

This time the tables were turned and it was Edward waiting in the cave with the supplies for us, greeting us as we had greeted him and Bella. Our cave was even now set up with a heater and a generator, to be more convenient for our frequent passages. Vampires do not mind the cold, but freezing cold was mildly unpleasant for adults and downright intolerable for babies.

The mood in the cave changed instantly when Alice broke through the water carrying Ashley. Ashley was seething mad and I could feel the livid anger and discontent radiating off of her in thick billowing clouds of emotion. She was extremely upset because she was very cold, so Edward quickly wrapped her in a towel and held her in front of the heater while he dried and changed her. She was using her gift to keep him focused on making her more comfortable.

I emerged on Alice's heel and together we dried and changed Scryan, before we changed ourselves. The entire time, Scryan remained silent, his eyes out of focus in a vision, like he had been for the entire trip north. Visions were his way of coping with reality and his hatching had even come to a grinding halt for a period, because of said visions, but then the vision had ended and the hatching had resumed with a new vigor, saving me from intervening.

"I have missed you, Alice," Edward said giving her a hug.

"I'm glad to be back. Everything back in the normal world is settled. All our old friends know not to come looking for us and that we're fine no matter how many centuries we stay away. They all accepted that we were hiding from the Volturi because they want you, Bella, and me to join them. No one suspected a thing," Alice quickly informed our brother.

As Alice filled Edward in on all of the current happenings with our allied covens, we traveled quickly and were soon at the main house. The first thing we did was to get Ashley and Scryan some blood, because both of them were using their gifts to manifest this action into being. Neither of us had seen Allison and Jackson in a while, although Alice much more so than myself, so our first instincts had been to go kiss them, but now we got the blood first and reunited with our older children second.

While Alice and I were in the kitchen getting the blood, Edward retrieved Allison and Jackson from the nursery room. He waited with them in the living room for us so that our family could have a private reunion before the entire family barged in. Allison and Jackson were fast approaching their one hundredth birthday, so they looked to be about two human years old and we were planning a big party.

"Mommy! Daddy!" "Mama! Dada!" Allison and Jackson cried simultaneously as we entered the living room with freshly fed hatchlings in arm. Both Allison and Jackson wanted to be picked up.

I sat down on the couch with Scryan in one arm and picked Allison up with the other. I planted a kiss on her forehead and said, "Ali! Daddy missed you sweetheart. I hope you were good while I was gone." Allison nodded in assent.

Esme and Edward had alternated watching her, saving Emmett from the task. Otherwise, Allison surely would not have been able to look me in the eyes and indicate that she had indeed been good. As it was, I could sense a small amount of deceit in the nod, but this was probably because she could not help teasing Emmett whenever she saw him.

Alice sat down next to me, with Ashley in one arm, and picked Jackson up with the other. She kissed him on the nose and asked, "How's my sweetie pie?" Jackson, unlike Allison, had no problem with Emmett. In fact, he rather liked Emmett because he often indulged in Jackson's love of extreme sports with him, so Jackson had spent his time alternating between Emmett and Esme, while I was away.

"Who's that?" Jackson asked pointing at Ashley.

"This is your sister Ashley," Alice explained.

"Ash?" Jackson asked and Alice nodded.

"I like her. She's pretty like you, Mama," Jackson added.

"Daddy, who're you holding?" Allison asked me.

"This is your new brother Scryan," I replied sending my children my love.

"Scryan, I'm your big sister Ali," Allison said to the baby, kissing him on his forehead gently.

After Jackson and Allison had a good look at Ashley and Scryan, respectively, Alice and I switched toddlers.

"Mine's prettier," Jackson bragged to Allison about Ashley, while still in my arms.

"Mine's taller," Allison bragged back, referring to Scryan and not wanting to be out done.

"Mine has cool red eyes."

"So does mine," Allison retorted.

"Mine's hair is the correct color," Jackson said.

"There's no such thing as the right color. Besides, mine has hair like Daddy."

Allison and Jackson went on like that for a few minutes comparing siblings. Apparently Allison had claimed Scryan, while Jackson had claimed Ashley; it was some sort of sharing the same egg-bearer bond. And after they each asked a few more questions about their new siblings, our happy family went into the nursery room to introduce the new babies to their cousins.

Eliza seemed to share Allison's fascination with Scryan and stayed close to her, asking about her new brother. Masen quickly became jealous of Eliza occupying Allison's attention, so he butted in and began asking Allison about her brother as well. And while Edward's children were fighting over Allison and Scryan, Aiden was the most curious about Ashley.

Aiden walked over to Ashley and placed his hand on hers, sending her a wave of calming peace. Ashley was surprised by this gesture, because she had only felt me change emotions before, but she quickly returned the peace and topped it off with a hefty dose of serenity and happiness. The two babies continued to exchange emotions and Ashley did not even seem bored with the fact that Aiden could only bring about the one peaceful feeling, because she was too busy enjoying her new friend to care.

After all of the children's curiosities were satisfied, we had a welcome home party. Since the latest two eggs were implanted into adult Inuits, Ashley and Scryan's hosts were the last two that had to be watched in the States. With our arrival, our entire family was brought back together and so we went all out on the celebration. It was a lot of fun, especially because Ashley was having fun; her enthusiasm being contagious.

After the customary family reunion was attended to, Alice and I picked up our four monsters and went home, just the six of us. We wanted to continue our previous schedule as much as possible, without change, in order to make the transition to having two more siblings as easy as possible for Jackson and Allison.

When Allison and Jackson were babies, Alice had taken to teaching them how to finger-paint in the evenings. We would cover the table with paper like a tablecloth, then set each child on one side and hand them the paint. It was rather messy and their pictures did not look like much at first, but Alice said that it was encouraging their creativity.

Allison's pictures started off as happy scenes filled with snow, tundra, and local animals, well that was what she claimed the blobs were anyway. But over the years, her technique improved, to the point where she was painting elaborate oil paintings of rocket ships and outer space. She was quickly becoming as good of an artist as my Alice.

When Jackson started out, he mostly used red paint. He painted whole sheets of red. Sometimes there were humanoid blobs in the red, and when I asked him what he was making, he would answer, "Blood, Dada," and smile at me. He was recreating his visions, and as he grew older, he too improved in his painting abilities. Now he was making elaborate tableaus depicting ancient battlefields from wars fought long ago.

So now that Scryan and Ashley had joined the family, Alice brought the finger paints back out. Once again she covered the table in paper and we sat a baby on each side and let them play in the paint. Only this time we set up a pair of easels for Allison and Jackson on the side.

Ashley painted vibrating clouds of color that I recognized as emotional emissions from everyone in the room. The hope colored blob was clearly my beautiful Alice; I could recognize her emotions in any rendering. It was harder to tell Jackson and Allison apart, because Ashley had used happiness and love to color both of them, but Scryan was clearly distinguishable by his serenity and calmness that imbibed his being.

Scryan painted a colorful blob, and when Alice asked him what it was, he answered, "Hat." But no matter which way I turned the blob, I just could not make a hat out of it and the second time she asked, he answered, "Water," even though it was the same picture. Maybe it was a hat floating in water, or maybe Alice and I were trying to read too much into a painting made by a baby.

If we really wanted to know what the picture was, we could always ask Edward to translate, but this was our family time and I hated to bring Edward into it for something as trivial as deciphering a painting. Plus, we could always wait until Scryan learned to talk and then ask him. With our perfect vampiric memories, he would still remember what the picture was supposed to be years from now.

Allison's speech had now improved to the point where her speech was already at an adult level and she could even explain complex scientific principals to us. And Jackson could say sentences and simple paragraphs, at about a ten year old human level, so he could finally share his visions with us. Now every night after painting time, Alice and I sit with Ashley and Scryan in our laps, while Allison and Jackson talked to us.

Jackson would tell us of Alice's past, specifically of her time with her biological parents and her time sitting and waiting, day after day, in the mental institution. He told of how from the time she was four years old she would sit at her desk at home and draw her visions of me, clinging to them as her lifeline to her future.

I was Alice's only hope and her only family, at a time when I could not remember what those concepts were. It was only after she was institutionalized and the shock treatments started that she stopped being coherent enough to remember and draw her visions. Then she would lie in bed, having vision after vision of me, as they slipped through her fingers just out of her grasp.

In addition to the touching stories of Alice's past, Jackson would tell us of all the wars that ever were, because war was his favorite subject. He told us of the Great Eldritch Creature War, just as Alice had seen in her visions of him. He explained how it was that we as a species had lost our past: technically, vampires were extinct for two entire days. And he told us how our kind lived before our history was lost to us.

Vampires used to have our own traditions, not stolen human ones. They did not marry when they fell in love, but had mating ceremonies, called Conjuxtion, when they came of age. In Conjuxtion the husband, or Vir, and the wife, or Uxor, would pledge their love to each other around a fire. Then all of the other couples who were due to be conjuxed that century would each, one couple at a time, repeat their own pledges in sort of a mass wedding. Add some symbolic flowers to the fire and a wild vampire party complete with human sacrifice and that was Conjuxtion.

Normally, by the time that the two thousand years of maturation had passed and the pure-blood vampire had reached sexual maturity, they had long since found their true mates. So once every hundred years all of the couples that would turn two thousand in the next hundred years, the age of the youngest partner being used, were gathered up to be officially mated. Each vampire has only one true mate, which was similar to imprinting with the shape-shifters, only it did not occur at first sight and there was a voluntary component to it. A second true mate could not exist while the first one still lived, so unlike humans, vampires never fell out of love or divorced.

Unlike in human society, male and female vampires were considered equals. In vampiric society both sexes disgorged eggs and cared for their offspring in the way that a human mother would. They did not even use the terms mother and father. They used cotia and custos, meaning egg bearer and mate of egg bearer, respectively. Of the two children born to a couple, one would call the female Cotia and the male Custos, while the other child referred to the male as Cotia and the female was Custos.

Everything in vampiric society was as equal as the distribution of child rearing. Often a mated pair would have other responsibilities and only two children, not four, would be produced at a time. One parent would care for the two children while the mate worked, but which was which did not correlate to gender. It correlated to which special skill one partner or the other possessed.

Also Christmas and other religious holidays were not even invented back then, and birthdays were all too frequent, so birthdays were celebrated only once every hundred years and the births of great vampiric leaders were the celebrated holidays. And when vampires were not celebrating their great leaders, they were commemorating their greatest battles.

There was one battle that was fought so long ago that it was the oldest war in our record. It was celebrated more than the others, mostly because it was the first event in our remembered history. Vampires learned to write long before humans did and our oral histories were far more accurate going back eons earlier, so this story was far older than any the humans had. Tonight, Jackson was telling us the tale of this particular battle.

"The First War, as it was called, was between the spirit warriors and the vampires. This was before the spirit warriors and shape-shifters formed a covenant against the rest of the eldritch creatures; they both valued human life, uniting them in their desire to protect the humans from the rest of us," Jackson began, but Allison soon interrupted.

"Spirit Warriors were closely related to humans, but they maintained the skills cassette in their genome," Allison began. She liked to add in scientific information about the species in Jackson's histories. "They had, however, lost the flippase gene, so that the spirit warrior allele was always turned on and could not be flipped to another skill."

"So the spirit warriors hated us, for we killed the humans, and they still interbred with them on occasion," Jackson continued once Allison was done. "They decided to take it upon themselves to defend the humans and to stop us from drinking. They surrounded a human city with lit torches, because this was the only weapon they could use against us. But we had to drink.

"So we bit an army of humans and brought them down upon the spirit warrior guards. The spirit warriors were no match for a vampire, because they could not harm us with their spirit selves. And their human forms were no stronger than regular humans, so we slaughtered the protectors and drank the humans. It was a major success for all vampires.

"After that, the spirit warriors did not try to protect the humans. They ran from us, to the furthest reaches of the Earth that they could find. Australia was unknown to vampires and uninhabited by our kind, so they settled there. And we had the herd to ourselves, unprotected, to feast upon," Jackson finished his tale.

Jackson, being just shy of his hundredth birthday, had trouble sitting still for long periods of time, so as soon as he was done with relaying the vision, he took off for a lap around his carpet surfing track. This was the first time Ashley and Scryan had witnessed the gravity defying stunt, so they were both instantly filled with curiosity. They each indicated that they wanted down and then crawled over to the track to watch their brother up close.

It was only fifteen seconds later that Scryan reached out to the wall and planted his palms flat against the wall and began to pull himself up. All vampires could scale walls in this manner, which was something Edward had taken full advantage of back in his stalking days before Bella's conversion.

Ashley quickly followed Scryan's example, leading to the presence of two babies clinging to our walls.

"This is how it starts," Alice said indicating Scryan and Ashley. "It won't take them long now to realize that the same principal holds true for clinging to the ceiling. As soon as their legs straighten out, they'll be able to use their feet for suction cups, and then we'll forever have to watch our heads for attacks from above."

"Yes, but they look so cute climbing the walls!" I exclaimed kissing her on the nose as Allison joined Jackson on the carpet track.

"Oh and, Jazz?" Alice asked me.

"Yes," I replied taking her hand in mine.

"Tomorrow you're taking down that track: no extreme sports in the living room," Alice said. "And Allison, you're grounded from mixing chemicals indefinitely."

Allison grumbled and made herself scarce, crawling into the corner with a book. Judging from her fear and apprehension, she must have known that her mother had fourteen years of punishments and reprimands stored up and waiting for her.

"Mom!" Jackson cried coming to a halt in the middle of the ceiling, not realizing that the momentum was nine tenths of what was holding him up.

The suction created by his feet was not enough to hold the weight of his entire body, because that would require his hands to also be used as suction cups. Consequently, gravity over took him and he fell to the floor. But like a cat, he righted himself in the air and landed on his feet, standing up.

"See?" Alice asked our son.

"I'm all right!" he quickly proclaimed. "And that never happened once while you were gone. Did it, Dad?"

"Nope: not once," I answered. "But maybe we can find an alternative outlet for your daredevil urges while indoors?"

Alice zoned out in a vision before returning to the present. "Videogames. The humans have a new 3D videogame with a board and you ride it while staying in one place in the living room. It has surfboard, skateboard, and snowboard settings," Alice answered.

And so for the most part, the six of us lived happily ever after. Alice and I were home and back together, permanently. We had the children I craved and for the first time since the disgorgement of Allison's egg, I found myself completely happy and satisfied with the children I had. Alice even seemed to have gotten over her apprehension regarding the children and come into her own as a mother. She saw nothing but clear skies and smooth sailing for us from now on.


	31. Chapter 29

Rosalie's POV:

Sixty-two years later, Emmett was acting moody and suspicious. At first I did not think anything of it, because I figured he was just nervous about the new baby. Violet's parasitism was coming along nicely, with Nakkertok in amazingly good health for his age, at least that was what Edward and Carlisle said. In sharp contrast to our first two parasitisms where we had adopted our hosts and treated them as our children, neither Emmett of I had ever met the latest human.

With only twenty-five years left until the hatching, my man might have a few more worries on his mind than usual, so I really did not think anything of Emmett's strange behavior until this morning when I caught him tampering with our blood supplies. We had a refrigeration unit full of blood and there was plenty of synthetic blood for the children and even some egg-control blood for us adults. Lily and Rosita each drank four units of synthetic blood daily, while Emmett and I had one unit of egg-control blood in the morning.

Egg-control blood was our new form of birth control that Alice had spear-headed. Basically, it was synthetic blood with hormones added to prevent gamete formation, because without gametes, fertilization could not occur and eggs could not form. The hormones were added to the blood to aid in absorption, because that method was easiest on our digestive systems. The human method, in which they put the hormones into pills, just led to us vomiting up pills every day. Not a pretty sight. And injections just did not work for obvious reasons.

At first when I saw Emmett rummaging through our blood supplies, I thought that one of the children was thirsty, even though it was still an hour before their scheduled feeding time. Although, Lily was currently in my left arm, while Rosita was in my right, so I think I would know if they were thirsty. Instead of seeming particularly thirsty, the girls seemed aghast at his behavior.

"Daddy's hurting the blood again," Lily whispered into my ear and Rosita nodded. She said it so quietly, that I did not think Emmett would be able to make the words out from where he was, still digging through the refrigeration unit. The girls and I were hiding at the top of the staircase, spying on him from a distance. Despite his excellent senses, he had not noticed us yet.

Hurting the blood? What a strange thing to say. But then I saw with my own eyes what the girls meant: Emmett proceeded to switch the labels of the egg-control blood with that of the synthetic blood. He then poured the two units of egg-control blood, which were now labeled as regular synthetic blood, down the sink. He emptied the units down the drain with the water running and then went on to pour bleach down the drain, to cover up the smell.

Come to think of it, the drain has smelled like blood and bleach every morning when I came down from giving the girls their baths for the past three days. Was this why? Had Emmett been destroying egg-control blood for three days now? Three days ago he had claimed that he had spilled when making the girls' breakfast, while yesterday he said that the blood was passed its expiration date. Of course it was not, because I checked the labels in the trashcan after he left, which was why I was suspicious of and spying on my husband today.

"Have you seen daddy hurt the blood before?" I asked my daughters in a barely audible whisper. Emmett would probably hear our murmurs and assume I was talking to the girls while getting them dressed in the bedroom. That was what I was supposed to be doing.

Lily nodded vigorously, as if hurting blood was the worst thing her father could ever do, while Rosita answered, "For months now. He was taking it with him and hurting it at Grandma's house."

We just started keeping the egg-control blood at our house for convenience, because up until last week, Alice did not have enough of a backlog to do so. She was adding the hormones fresh every day and making us pick up our dose straight from her synthetic blood facility. I would take mine with me and drink it outside, away from the babies, so that they would not have to smell it and get thirsty prematurely.

Emmett also took his egg-control blood with him and said he was drinking it during his break. He and Jasper had become the regular duo assigned to child care and we had agreed upon a system of breaks for the pair after realizing that the children were more manageable if those watching them were fresh. Esme always gave Emmett a break in the morning, while Edward and I breaked Jasper in the afternoon. And they both got a break at noon when Carlisle, Bella, and Alice would stop by.

But I now began to suspect that instead of drinking his blood during his break, Emmett was likely pouring it down the sink at the main house. Esme and Jasper either had not noticed or had not cared. Surely it must be the former, because they would have told me if they knew, right? But how could Jasper not know that Emmett was being deceitful? And why did Edward not hear it in his thoughts? And Alice must have seen him tossing out the blood. If this had been going on for months, why had they not told me about it? I am his wife, I should know.

While these thoughts were running through my mind, Emmett was putting away the bleach, clearly almost done with his act of sabotage. I took this as my cue to take the girls back inside the bedroom and pretend to be combing hair. Both Lily and Rosita now had hair past their shoulders, which had to be combed and put up every day or they would get blood in it. I had only made the most cursory of ponytails in each girl's hair, but now I grabbed the brush and began to mess with Rosita's blond curls.

"How's it going sweetheart?" Emmett asked me, entering the room and giving each of us a peck on the cheek.

"Rosita's curls aren't behaving today. I just can't get rid of the frizz," I lied, indicating the newly frizzled hair.

"Ro, what has Mommy done to your hair, sweet girl?" Emmett joked, taking the child from me. He quickly found the no-frizz product we used on our daughter and applied copious amounts of the stuff before recombing her hair and affixing a new ponytail. "All done. Now what color ribbons are we going with today?"

"Yellow," "Pink," Lily and Rosita answered simultaneously.

The four of us spent the rest of our morning playing with hair ribbons until it was time for breakfast. We went downstairs and Emmett prepared each of the girls a cup before handing me a unit of egg-control blood and taking the other for himself. We only had two units of the stuff left and I had watched him destroy those an hour ago, so I was positive that these were the fakes.

I watched as all three of my family members drank their blood, but I did not touch mine. Why would Emmett be tampering with the egg-control blood? Why had he been throwing his away for months now? Only one of us needed to take it for it to be effective, so both of us taking it was over kill. Did he not like the taste and just wanted to rely on my ingestion of the stuff to prevent egg formation?

If so, why would he now be trying to prevent me from taking the stuff too? And if he had been successful in that endeavor for two days in a row, did that mean we were currently with egg? No, certainly not; we were not on the schedule for personal time until tomorrow. Even if we were both producing gametes, there was no way fertilization had taken place. Yet.

"Oh my!" I gasped, coming to a sudden realization. Was that it then? Did Emmett _want_ fertilization to occur tomorrow during our scheduled activities? "Do you want another baby Em?"

I was all for having a house full of kids, but I just did not want them to all be the same age. A few hundred years in between would be perfect.

"No, why do you ask that?" Emmett asked. He was a good liar; we all had to be.

"You know I want more children too, but Violet will be here in a few years and that will make three within a hundred years of each other. I just want to spread them out a little and enjoy them," I continued on, as if my husband had not just lied to my face.

"I don't want another baby, Rosalie," he growled at me, scaring Rosita and Lily, who were in our arms, each still clutching an empty cup. "I drank the egg-blood, didn't I?"

I shook my head and was about to reveal what I had seen, when I heard several sets of footsteps running towards our house and our front door suddenly opened. And then Alice, Edward, and Carlisle were standing in front of us.

Carlisle had his arms out and was pleading calmly, "Please hand over the children before you two do this. You're scaring them. They're just babies and they don't need to see this. I'm just going to take them to my house until you two calm down."

Calm down? I was calm. Why was I so calm? I almost felt calm enough that I could sleep. Only, I cannot sleep; not ever. This was clearly Jasper's work. I wanted to kill him, only I did not. I was too calm to want to kill him, but I would want to kill him if I could want that.

Emmett was one step ahead of me, handing Rosita over and climbing out the window to go after Jasper, only Alice and Edward were already there and restraining him. I looked at Carlisle, to see why he had not left yet, and then finally realized that he was waiting on me to hand Lily over. So I did and he left, sparing my girls from seeing whatever it was their father was planning.

"Ow! Emmett!" Edward complained when Emmett bit his hand. The mind-reader must not have been fast enough this time.

Edward put his hand into his mouth and tried to suck the venom out, while Alice still had Emmett firmly in her grasp, but this apparently was not good enough for Jasper, because a wave of lethargy washed through us all and Emmett and I went down. I managed to pry my eyes open, despite the lethargy, and I saw Edward and Alice stumbling around trying to fight it, although Emmett was out like a baby.

Jasper came in through the window and put Emmett in a chokehold from behind and I felt the lethargy lift slowly. "Now, we can all play nice and not touch Alice, or I can put the lethargy back," Jasper warned as Alice scooted back to the corner of the room and out of Emmett's reach.

"She had me," Emmett replied groggily, barely fighting the lethargy.

"And she's half your size!" Jasper growled back, his fury biting with his words. Then the fury was gone and regular anger replaced it. "Although, this really is Edward's fault for letting you go."

"He bit me," Edward replied softly, but it would have come off better if he had managed indignation. "And for the last time, Emmett: Nakkertok is fine. He is not dead or injured or sick or anything. I just showed you a video of him last week!"

"What are you talking about? Did something happen to Violet?" I asked confused.

"She's dead! I know she is, 'cause Edward and Carlisle won't let me see her," Emmett replied.

And at the same time, Edward replied, "She is fine. Nakkertok is healthy. We just don't want the villagers seeing all of the vampires and growing suspicious. Carlisle and I are more than enough to check on him."

"What do you see happening to Nakkertok, Alice?" I asked, noticing the grim look on her face as she came out of a vision. I grabbed a pencil and paper and shoved it in front of her face. I would have been screaming at her if Jasper would have allowed it. "Alice? Show me!"

Alice took the pencil and paper and began to draw. She drew Emmett tearing the egg out of a human; Violet's egg. Then she turned the page over and drew him cuddling with what looked like a newborn human. This baby was too small to be one of our kind, because our babies were born the size of one year olds, but it did look like the pictures Alice had drawn before of Violet.

"He wants to remove Violet prematurely. She's tiny, but she'll be able to grow. It's past the seventy year mark, so she'll survive," Alice revealed and I froze in shock.

I had never had a newborn before. Even Larissa and Nikolai were a few months old before I got them. Sure Lily and Rosita were newly hatched, but they were so much bigger and practically self-sufficient in comparison. I have always wanted a newborn. Bella got one with Nessie, although she was already passed that stage before Bella's conversion had been complete. I cuddled that baby every moment I could, but she just kept growing before my very eyes. This baby would not.

"She will grow? She'll be fine?" I begged Alice for answers, knowing full well that I was pushing Jasper's patience.

"Yes, Violet will be unharmed, but Nakkertok will die Rosalie. Think about what you're deciding, because his blood will be on your hands," Alice warned.

"Nakkertok's already dead. I've been asking to see him for years, but Carlisle and Edward just keep bringing back their doctored videos!" Emmett spat and Jasper tightened his hold, but continued to slowly lift the lethargy.

"We are not lying to you. He is alive and well," Edward countered.

"Not for long. You'll kill him, Emmett," Alice warned, giving me a look like she had just caught me boiling puppies alive.

I was torn, because a newborn was the one thing I had always wanted and never had, but could I really let Nakkertok die for my dream? "How long will she be a newborn for?" I asked Alice.

"She'll be the size of a one year old in twenty-five years, whether you leave her in her host or not," Alice replied.

Twenty-five years until one. Humans stay in that newborn stage for the first three months and there are twelve months in a year, which is one fourth of the first year. Twenty-five divided by four is six years and three months with a newborn baby vampire.

"Stop it! Rosalie, you cannot think about it that way! Just stop," Edward pleaded. "You will kill Nakkertok. Instead of being his savior, you will be his murderer, even if you allow Emmett to do it."

"And she won't be a newborn. She'll be premature, which means she'll be smaller than she's meant to be," Alice added.

Why would our babies come out as one year olds anyway? That large was unnatural. Humans are born at a smaller size. Surely Violet's life will be better if we remove her from her egg now. She cannot see anything from inside that egg and her hearing must be muffled; all of her senses must be stifled in that egg.

"You are trying to justify murder, Rosalie," Edward scolded me, obviously listening in on my thoughts.

"She'll be fine. Babies should be born that size anyway," I argued.

"No, she will be grossly premature. Just because Alice does not see anything going wrong with Violet does not mean that there are no risks involved. Just think about how sickly little Dava was. Remember how premature she was?"

Dava was the only one of the hosts that was still the size of a newborn when we got her. She was five months old, but she had been six months premature, so she had only weighed three pounds at the time. I should have spent more time with Dava, but I was too distracted by the newly hatched vampires, because Allison and Jackson were brand new at the time and I had never seen a vampire baby before. None of us had.

"You thought Dava was boring because she was so sick all of the time, remember? Even after she was implanted, she was still premature and slept eighteen hours a day," Edward said.

"Alice, will there be anything wrong with Violet, besides her small size?" I asked, hoping for more information to help me make this difficult decision.

"She won't be able to sit up or even hold her head up. She won't be able to keep her eyes open and hold eye contact for more than a second," Alice answered as if these things were absolutely horrible.

But they were not horrible to me. They were just typical newborn traits; newborn traits that I had been missing. "And?" I asked with a tone of voice that would convey my lack of concern.

"And she'll be premature," Alice replied, leaving something out. It was like there was something she was trying to say but could not bring herself to say it out loud. Finally after a few minutes, she choked out one more word. "Converting."

"She means that the baby will not be done developing and it will seem like the conversion process is still going on. Violet will drink blood and have no heartbeat, but the anus forms first in development. It will not be sealed yet and we have no way of knowing if all of the internal organs are fully formed," Edward said what Alice could not. After a short pause in which he appeared to be thinking about something, he added, "And the skin, there is something off about the skin. It looks sensitive, as if it is not fully vampire skin yet."

"Why does the anus form at all?" I asked. I knew that we adults had a vestigial one from our time as humans, but I did not understand why our children shared this vestigial trait.

Normally Allison or Carlisle would answer these types of questions, but neither was here and Edward was a doctor, so he took it. "When the embryo forms, the anal tube forms first in all deuterostomes- everything from starfish to fish to humans. The embryo actually invaginates, with the layer of cells migrating inside to make the anal tube. This tube elongates until it comes out the other end, making the mouth. The brain then develops near the mouth and embryogenesis continues. So there can be no mouth without a butt.

"But we have no use for the exit, so it seals up and our internal organs undergo a rearrangement to make more room for blood. Our stomach enlarges and takes up all of the extra room. Embryos track evolution. As a species we evolved from an ancestor with an anus, so our young go through a stage with an anus. The same applies for why human embryos go through stages with gills and tails, because they evolved from a fish-like ancestor. The gills and tails are later converted to parts of the neck and butt, respectively, but the point is that they still have to form. That is why fish and human embryos look so similar and chicken and human embryos are practically indistinguishable.

"If you remove Violet now, before the rearrangement is complete, you will be forcing your baby to have to endure that part of the transformation. Do you really want that for your little girl, Rosalie? I don't think you do. I think you remember enough about your own transformation to think twice," Edward concluded his speech.

I did remember my transformation; every single burning minute of it. I could not let my daughter burn for twenty-five years.

"Shut up Edward, you don't know what you're talking about!" Emmett yelled, realizing that our brother's words were affecting me and that I was wavering. "The babies go through the same process whether they're inside the host or not. So if there was pain involved, which there's _not_, the amount of pain would be the same. Transformation only burns humans because they don't already have venom in their system. Violet's already a vampire and she already has venom in her system. Either way, she will _not_ burn."

"Emmett's right: the babies don't burn," Jasper took Emmett's side, even though he was still restraining him. "I would feel it if they did. And not one of the babies as ever mentioned burning. Focus on the truth here, piano boy. I'm getting tired of restraining my brother."

"Fine, I was exaggerating with the burning, but the part about the conversion not being finished is true. The babies really do need the last twenty-five years of the parasitism to complete the process," Edward replied seriously.

"But they can complete the process outside of the egg just as easily," Emmett retorted. "Let's ask Jackson about how premature eggs turned out in the past. Or we can ask Allison if there's a biological reason that the conversion needs to be finished inside the egg. From what she's said so far, there isn't."

"We won't be involving my children in your petty fight. Bella, Esme, and Carlisle already have their hands full with the ten babies," Jasper countered.

"But Rosalie was right earlier: human babies are born at this stage. Why should vampire babies be any different? Why wait when Violet can be removed now? Rose, don't you want to hold her?" Emmett pleaded with me, his eyes wide and resembling an innocent puppy as he looked at me through his thick lashes.

"Yes. So much," I answered him.

"Think about what you're saying you two: human babies are born at this stage. The key word being _human_," Alice said, coming out of another vision. "All other mammals are born more advanced, like our own young. Human offspring are born prematurely because their heads are so large that it's hard for them to pass through the birth canal otherwise. Our offspring are not born. They don't travel through the birth canal. They hatch out of eggs, so they can take however long they need to for development. Humans are the abnormal ones, not us."

"Yeah, if they could, humans would gestate for twenty-one months and come out as one year olds: I saw it on the discovery channel once," Jasper added, supporting his wife.

"Why are we still here? Rosalie, baby, you and I are in agreement on this: Let's go take our baby back and deal with the repercussions later," Emmett insisted.

"Let us not forget that the repercussions we are considering involve the murder of a host!" Edward exclaimed, outraged.

"He'd be dead anyway," Emmett replied shrugging his shoulders. "He would've died seventy-five years ago if not for my egg."

"Isn't there some way to save the host? Jasper, can't we ask Allison if there's any way to save Nakkertok?" I begged.

"No, like I said before, we won't be dragging children into this. That's why Carlisle took Lily and Rosa away," Jasper answered. "Allison said that there's no way to save the hosts and that's the end of it."

"No. She said that, but she was thinking that there is no way to save the hosts without harming the baby. And she was hiding what she meant by that," Edward replied, deep in thought.

I turned to Alice to see if she had any answers, but her eyes were unfocused in yet another vision. It was Jasper who spoke next, "We won't harm the baby to save the host. The human gets one hundred years of good health in exchange for a little blood and sacrifice. End of story."

Emmett was obviously appalled that anyone would be thinking of sacrificing Violet to save Nakkertok. "See, that's why we need to remove my baby sooner, rather than later," he argued, not exactly making sense, but trying to sway me with emotion.

"Allison meant that the only way to save a host is to change him into a vampire, like Edward did with Bella when Nessie was born. If you bite Nakkertok before Violet hatches and drinks him dry, he can become one of us," Alice informed us, refocusing her eyes.

"No! Changing him will kill Violet!" Emmett exclaimed.

"Actually, it won't hurt her at all," Alice replied.

"This is getting carried away. Nakkertok's Emmett's host, so it's his decision. If he doesn't want him changed, then no one will bite the man on penalty of death," Jasper warned.

"And you are going to enforce this?" Edward asked with disdain for his brother.

"Yes," Jasper answered calmly.

"This is too much," I said taking a seat in the corner and trying to sort through all that had transpired since I caught Emmett destroying the egg-control blood this morning. "Emmett, what I don't understand is why you were trying to make another egg."

"I love you," Emmett answered simply.

"He has an irrational notion that Nakkertok is dead and that Violet has been destroyed. He wants another baby to replace her, even though I have told him hundreds of times that the human is fine. I have done everything I can think of to convince him that the baby is fine and I bring back video of them every week," Edward said, clearly annoyed at my husband.

"Does he really think that?" I asked looking at Jasper, who nodded. "Do you really think that, Em? Poor baby."

I pushed Jasper away and took my husband into my arms to hold, knowing that he must have been suffering far more than he has let on. Jasper let go, but took up position in front of the window, while Edward blocked the door. Alice was standing in front of the vent, but how she thought Emmett could escape through that little tiny hole was beyond me. Maybe she thought I would escape through the vent. Maybe I was also being detained for making decisions against Nakkertok's life.

"Yes," Emmett answered, burying his face into my neck and hair.

"Why can't Emmett see his human? You're such a condescending prick Edward! All my husband wants is to see his host and make sure his egg's alright and you won't let him! Take Emmett to see Nakkertok or I'll remove my baby myself!" I declared.

Alice was looking at Jasper, but he just shrugged and said, "Sorry, I agree with her and she's threatening Edward, not you. Technically, I think Edward and Carlisle are guilty of egg-knapping for refusing to let Emmett see his host. This is Emmett's decision to make, not the rest of us." And with that, Jasper backed away from the window and left a clear escape route for us.

"But Jazz! He'll kill Nakkertok if he sees him!" Alice said, trying to position herself in front of the window, but Jasper was already there blocking her and taking her in his arms. With her abilities, she could easily out maneuver him, but she must not really have wanted to.

"Fine! I'll take you to see Nakkertok today! Just decide not to kill him and agree to stay back at all times," Edward conceded, but Alice went into yet another vision.

"He's not going to stay back. He'll want to smell him. Unless he smells his host, he'll keep thinking that he's dead," Alice replied resurfacing once more.

"What does smell have to do with it?" Edward asked confused.

"Everything. We know our hosts by the smell of our egg on them. That's the entire problem: Emmett hasn't smelled his host once so he thinks his egg is dead," Alice answered.

"What? Why didn't you say so before? I could have been bringing back sweaty parkas or something," Edward replied indignantly.

"Speaking of which, why'd you guys wait until this morning to show up?" I asked accusingly. "Surely one of you had to have known that Emmett was switching out my egg-control blood."

"Rose, you know you would've bit our heads off if we had said anything before you were ready to hear it," Alice answered.

"And we still had another week to intervene. Emmett never took any of the birth control, but Rosalie, you have not started making gametes again yet. Even if you two tried to conceive tomorrow as he planned, there could not be an egg yet," Edward revealed.

"He has only tampered with my blood for the past two days," I reasoned, thinking about the possibility of another baby. Yes, I wanted more children, but not until after Violet emerged. This whole having four children on the way at the same time thing was too much for me. Why could we not stick to one at a time, like humans?

"Um, not quite. I've been switching out your blood for a week now. I broke into Alice's facility and changed the bags," Emmett admitted sheepishly.

"And I've been changing the bags back after you leave," Alice revealed. "If you want to have a baby, you need to get your wife to consent to it first. And I didn't know that the problem was the lack of smell until right now, when Emmett finally decided not to kill the human. I saw a very disturbing vision of your husband climbing into his host's bed in order to smell him while he was asleep."

"That would explain why Jasper was so moody the last few years of Scryan's parasitism- he did not smell his host enough," Edward replied.

"But I still smelled him once a year, so I wasn't as bad as Emmett here. And you're one to talk, piano boy, because I seem to remember both you and Bella being all emotional and sappy during the last few decades of Eliza and Masen's parasitisms," Jasper teased.

"We were not that bad. And if it's a pheromone thing, then maybe we should take Esme with us too. That way we do not have two blubbering parents-to-be on our hands," Edward said.

"Yes, you and Carlisle can take Emmett and Esme to see their eggs and Jasper and I can go back to our own lives," Alice said taking Jasper's hand and jumping out our window. We barely heard her next words as they ran off towards the main house. "If you'll excuse us, we left our own children with Bella, Esme, and Carlisle. They need a break from Ashley and Scryan's pranks."

"Do not even think about it!' Edward growled, grabbing Emmett's hand as he moved to follow Jasper and Alice out the window. "If you kill that host then Carlisle and I will never help you find another!"

"But Jasper said that it was up to me!" Emmett growled back, pinning Edward against the wall.

"Not in the house boys!" I chastised, not wanting my house remodeled by a fight.

"Let's take this outside," Emmett replied.

"Em, come here," I requested, taking him into my arms again. "Go with Edward and smell your human. If Edward's telling the truth and your egg is fine, then leave her there and let the host live. If not and there's something wrong with Nakkertok, anything at all, then bring our little girl back to me. Deal?"

I knew that I was giving up my only chance at having a newborn baby, but I also knew that I would never be able to live with myself if I allowed Nakkertok to be sacrificed before his time. The eggs gave life and I could not let that gift be cut short. That and I could not forget Alice's warnings of there being a risk to the baby if she were to emerge prematurely. Even if Allison said that Violet would be fine, I just could not get Dava out of my mind.

"Can't we just bring him to our island?" Emmett begged.

"No Em, we can't let him near our girls, you know that," I replied taking his face in my hands and kissing him softly on the lips.

"Meet me at the main house in three hours and we will go," Edward said before exiting out of the window as well.

"My thoughts must be pure again," Emmett replied shrugging.

"Or mine were dirty again," I countered, lacing my fingers with his before flipping him onto his back and having my way with my husband. It was not often that we found ourselves at home alone and without children, so we took full advantage of the precious time.

When we finished, I was feeling so good that I did not even notice what Emmett was doing, but after a minute I caught his eye and raised my eyebrow questioningly. "What're you doing, Em? You know that there's no point in doing that, because Alice was switching my egg-control blood back to the good stuff, don't you?"

Instead of answering, he just licked the white fluid off of his hand quicker. He gulped the last of it down at the same time his other hand reached down for seconds, but I reached out and stopped him. I kissed him on the lips before saying, "We'll have more babies, I promise. But now I need you to go check on Violet."

Emmett nodded and took a clean set of clothes into the bathroom to change, which was odd behavior for him, because he always changed right in front of me. I waited until the door was closed before going to the door and looking through the crack under the door. I watched as Emmett licked his fingers. He then proceeded to wipe all of the fluid he could find off of his body and then lick that off his fingers as well. I swear he would have just licked himself if he were a dog.

But there was no harm in licking up, so I just went back to the bed and put my clothes back on. "Emmett, stop eating your bodily fluids and just go!" I instructed after another minute passed and he still was not out of the bathroom. "I'll know if you start touching yourself!"

"Alright, alright, I'm going," Emmett said, exiting the bathroom fully dressed. "All of the other wives let their husbands eat it."

"No they don't. Alice _never_ lets Jasper eat it; not since he disgorged Scryan's egg. Bella would let Edward, but he's too much of a stick in the mud to admit he likes it. And Carlisle and Esme are too worried about having another accident, even though they both take their birth control every day."

"Alright, I concede: you're the best wife ever," he said before kissing me, hard.

I broke the kiss apart before saying, "Now, go check on that baby of ours."

Emmett complied and as it turns out, Edward had been telling the truth and Nakkertok and Violet were both fine. And once Emmett spent the day and night inhaling his host's scent, he began to believe Edward as well. Edward brought me back a few questionable photos of my husband smelling his host just a little too closely to be appropriate. Back in the day, before the children, I used to tack embarrassing pictures of Emmett to the mirror on my vanity, but I did not want my daughters to see their father like that, so I tucked these away in my photo album instead.

And now that Emmett's pheromone requirements were met, he stopped acting irrationally. He even stopped messing with the egg-control blood and started taking it himself for the first time. And he agreed that we should wait a few hundred years before trying to have another baby.


	32. Chapter 30

Edward's POV:

The ten children, especially Scryan and Ashley, kept us all busy for the next twenty-five years. They had battles in their minds over controlling every aspect of their lives. She tried to will him into submission, while he made the future where she was submissive more likely, and I thought Eliza and Masen were a handful. Jasper and Alice's newest two children were so much trouble that all of us found ourselves helping them out from time to time.

Now that there were so many children, not one of us, not even Jasper, could handle all ten of them alone. Jasper only needed one other person to help him, but without him, it took at least three of us to watch them all: one to do whatever Ashley willed, one to do whichever future Scryan preferred, and one to watch the other eight kids. I was still in awe of how Jasper was able to manage his four on his own. No one else could, not even Alice.

Although we had more children to care for, we had a lot less work to do now that the estate and synthetic blood manufacturing facilities were built, so it all evened out. Vampire birth control blood was a raving success and with this latest feat, we felt we could accomplish anything, although we still had day to day chores to attend to. Carlisle and I still went to the Inuit village once a week to check on Eohona and Nakkertok, but other than that and watching the children, we now had a lot more time to think of the latest and greatest pet project, like animal hosts. There was a push for something big to follow-up birth control blood, though Allison even admitted we were reaching with that one.

And since it was easier to work without a child on our hips, we still took turns watching the children during the day. But Jasper and Emmett seemed to have a knack for it, so they were saddled with the task more often than not. Jasper, with his empathy and ability to keep the little monsters under control, was a natural choice and he worked well with Emmett, who loved to teach. Jasper calmed them down, but it was Emmett that took advantage of this calm in order to bestow knowledge.

The rest of us viewed nursery duty as an onerous chore with keeping the peace the main goal, but Emmett had a proactive approach designed to keep the children so busy learning that they did not have time to get in trouble. It had not been successful that first time he had tried it, the day Carl and Rosita had their stomachs pumped for crayons, but that had been his first time being left alone with the children and there were simply too many of them. Since then, he has had a great deal more success and we were all more than pleased when our children came home knowing new things, like colors and shapes, and speaking in more complete sentences.

Of course, the rest of us still had to help out at the nursery. We took over for short periods several times a day, so that Jasper and Emmett could have breaks, because we found that fresh babysitters were far less likely to slip up. The babies wore on their watchers and even vampires became overwhelmed after being locked in a room with them all day.

Jasper and Emmett were not always available for nursery duties, because we adults used this time away from the children to go hunting and have private time with our spouses and these were things Emmett and Jasper had to do as well. I was often chosen in particular to replace Jasper, so that I could monitor Jackson and Scryan's visions when their parents were otherwise engaged. With one seeing the future and the other the past, there was always a danger that one of them would come across a vision he should not be seeing. I even tried to stop thoughts of their parents, in the hopes of preventing visions in the first place, because it was so difficult to stop a vision once it was started and it was impossible to erase the memories of what they had already seen.

I was not just concerned about my nephews having inappropriate visions, but I was also concerned that my children would be subjected to the visions through their own mind-reading abilities. If Scryan or Jackson saw something when Masen was present, then he would see it too. Or if they thought about it after the fact, he would still see. And even worse, Eliza did not need to be present when the visions were seen or thought about to see them.

And with my own egg being affected so much, I took my duties as vision censor very seriously, making sure to work the nursery whenever Alice and Jasper were together, like today. Today Rosalie and I were helping Emmett watch the babies. With the emergence of his newest daughter so close on the horizon, he was a bit more distracted than usual. That, combined with the absence of Jasper, his usual coconspirator, had led to an unusual morning in which we had already had one incident.

Emmett and Rosalie's little vampires were well behaved, most of the time. But this morning, Rosalie had been paying too much attention to Lily, and Rosita had gotten jealous. Rosalie was French braiding Lily's navel length dark brown hair, when Rosita burned Lily. Normally, Jasper would keep the children too calm to engage in this sort of behavior, while Emmett would keep them too busy to think of such things.

And even on a day like today, with Jasper out and Emmett distracted, I would usually catch this type of thing before it resulted in anyone getting hurt, but Rosita had been holding Masen's hand when she did it. Given their ridiculously high IQs it did not take the monsters long to discover Masen's loophole. He shielded anyone he touched, so all they had to do to get away with something in my presence was hold his hand while doing it.

Lily was far from helpless, so when she felt Rosita's burn, she flared up her physical shield, sending her sister flying through the wall. Rosita was not hurt, but the wall was. And Lily had to sit still next to Carl for an hour before the venom stopped burning. Keeping both of them still and in one place was easier said than done.

Masen claimed that he was not involved and that he was just holding Rosita's hand, but with his mind-reading skill there was no way he could not know. He was, however, an excellent liar, especially because I could only hear the thoughts he choose to share. He had Rosalie convinced of his innocence before I put him on time out for lying. Masen and Rosita both had a lecture on not hurting people and were set to help Esme repair the wall tomorrow. They would be more trouble than help, but we thought that seeing how fragile and difficult to repair walls were would curtail some of their destructive tendencies.

Eliza was, for once, not even involved. She had spent the entire morning cuddled in my arms, where she remained even now. Rosita had seen us cuddling, gotten jealous, and was still upset over being punished, and so had worked her way into Rosalie's arms, where she remained at the moment. Lily was still sitting next to Carl, healing from her sister's burn, while Aiden pumped out a false peace. Aiden was not one to let ill will fester, so he had turned up the peace as soon as Lily was burned. If only he had turned it up before any of this started, then maybe she would not have been burned in the first place.

While Rosita, Lily, Aiden, and Carl were still being affected by the earlier mischief, Ashley and Scryan were clinging to the ceiling like nothing had happened at all. They had climbed up there shortly after being dropped off this morning and that was where they will stay waiting in ambush until someone makes the mistake of walking directly underneath them. Either that or until Alice and Jasper come and retrieve their monsters from the ceiling. I was hoping for the latter, but Scryan saw a strong possibility that Esme would fall for their trap in a few hours.

Thus we were all avoiding the ambush lurking in the middle of the room, so I was not too concerned about the fact that Masen, Allison, and Jackson were huddled in a corner so soon after the last incident. I often saw Masen and Allison together in a corner exchanging thoughts, so it did not seem too odd to me that Jackson might join them, but Emmett thought otherwise.

Emmett was now overly cautious and paranoid after missing his daughter's earlier intentions and Aiden's weak peace was having no effect at all on him, because he was over analyzing everything the children were doing. 'I should climb up there and get the monsters off of the ceiling,' Emmett thought to himself before directing his thoughts at me. "Those three in the corner are suspicious, Edward. Just what are they thinking about behind Masen's shield? I know he's shielding them from you, because he's touching them.'

"It's fine Emmett, just leave it alone," I replied.

I may not have thought Jackson, Allison, and Masen were up to anything, but I was still curious as to their thoughts. By now Allison and Masen's private conversations were a mystery on the level with Bella's thoughts before she learned how to throw her shield. And although all of Masen and Eliza's thoughts were shielded from me, I found it particularly odd to be categorically excluded from Allison and Masen's conversations.

'Don't you wonder what they're thinking about? Have you ever found out what one of their secret conversations was about? I bet the three of them are planning a prank,' Emmett continued to rant internally, while I shook my head in reply.

Emmett paused his thoughts for a moment, before continuing, 'I know: I could run up and snatch Masen away and then you'd hear what the other two are thinking as soon as the connection is broken, but he'll hear what I'm thinking and tell Jackson and Allison to hide their thoughts, so I better act quickly before they have a chance to cover up what they're up too.'

And then before I could even shout out, "No, Emmett, don't," he was running and scooping up Masen, breaking the connection and his shield.

As soon as Masen's little hands were pulled away from Allison and Jackson, I became inundated with new thoughts. Masen was telepathing to me, 'Stop! Put me down! Help! Daddy, stop him. Please tell him to put me down.' And at the same time, I could hear the echo of similar pleas that he was sending to Rosalie, although I could no longer hear Emmett or what, if anything, Masen was telepathing to him.

At the same time that Masen's internal raucous began creating its infernal din in my head, quieter thoughts from Allison and Jackson emerged. They were both upset by Emmett's actions and the removal of their friend, but they were both still thinking about what they had been discussing before. And just what that was had nothing to do with causing trouble or planning a prank, as Emmett had accused. In fact, there was no sign of incriminating thoughts in their heads at all, but what was in there was extremely fascinating.

"I want Masen back," Allison complained out loud, while she was still thinking about the origins of the vampire species. Most of this was information she had already shared with me, like the two sets of vampiric chromosomes being derived from two separate instances of infection by the same lysogenic virus. But there was more information as well, such as which traits the transitional form, with only one extra set of chromosomes, had and what it was like.

Jackson's thoughts mirrored Allison's, but added another dimension to the story entirely. Where Allison knew the science behind our evolution, Jackson had seen said evolution unfold before his very eyes. Allison had snippets of pictures from the past, but it was the difference between watching a movie made from a series of still shots, or photos, and watching the same scene in live action: Jackson just had so much more detail in his visions of the transitory phase.

Allison knew that the first creature in our ancestral line was a member of the genus _Homo_ and if found today, its skeleton would be classified with the species we now call _Homo ergaster_. This species was the one infected with the so called vampire virus and had speciated almost immediately. One line had given rise to modern humans and a number of other non-blood-drinking descendants. The other line produced vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters. She knew these things, but she could not see them the way Jackson could.

Jackson had seen a vision of these early blood-drinkers; a vision that was so life-like it was as if it were real. He blinked his eyes one moment and the next he was with _Homo sanguinisis_ two million years ago. A young _H. sanguinisis _couple shared a blood meal from a _H. ergaster_ individual, but did not drink their prey dry. Instead the victim was covered with brush and left to make the change alone on the African savanna, insuring that the virus was replicated and passed on.

But the virus had more than one way of being passed on, because the blood of the victim was being used to nourish the unborn fetus within the female's body. The young _H. sanguinisis_ couple was similar to modern day hybrids in a number of ways, as Allison knew and thought about, due to the shared presence of one extra set of chromosomes. Both entities ran several degrees too hot, stuck in a perpetual state of fever, as well as possessing rapid healing and excessively quick growth. And more ominously, they shared the same short gestation time of just over a month.

But there was a very real difference between these ancient blood-drinkers and the present day hybrids I knew and loved, although Renesmee's gestation did show certain signs of what had been. That hard amniotic sack that had formed around my daughter like a layer of rock had also formed in the ancients. At first the offspring had been born, squeezed through the vaginal canal, with this sheet in place and the new parents had removed it with their teeth.

But then the vampire virus had begun to cause more problems as it evolved and mutated, creating a more supernatural creature capable of using the new genes it possessed. This virus had arisen inside an amoeba that was triply infected. There was a bacterial infection present, which was common enough for the cesspool that was the amoeba, as well as a rarer infection by an archaeal virus, which had just happened to have jumped the Domain level separation into a new host. Normally such leaps would lead to an evolutionary dead end, but there just happened to be a third infection present.

The third infection was caused by a large DNA virus of the NCLDV family. This family of viruses is more complex than the typical run of the mill common cold or even the flu. The largest members of this family are known to possess genomes that are larger than those of the smallest bacterial cells and even contain lipid membranes and mRNA in their virions. Virions are the infectious virus particles that travel between cells. But this particular virus had a number of other features, such as maintaining a copy number of exactly two.

A freak accident occurred within the amoeba and the DNA was damaged and repaired incorrectly. By chance the freak accident produced a recombinant virus that just happened to escape out into the _H. ergaster_ the amoeba was infecting. What started out as just a mild case of pneumonia for the hominin quickly turned into a new plague.

The new recombinant virus just happened to be able to latch onto the humanoid cells and reproduce, having just enough of the original DNA from the large DNA virus to ensure its survival. And it was the genes gleaned from the archaeal virus that turned us into such monsters and caused us to start drinking blood; puncturing the carotid artery and contamination with saliva being an excellent way of sharing bodily fluids and thus passing on the virus to new victims. But it was the genes derived from the Bacteria that changed our ancestors the most.

This particular Bacterium was preforming some interesting metabolism indeed, which was why the amoeba had tried to farm it inside their own cytoplasm, so that the Bacteria could grow and reproduce and provide the amoeba with food in otherwise hostile environments. It had worked for a short while, but then the Bacteria had escaped and taken over the cell, infecting it with uncontrollable bacterial growth. The amoeba would have died of this infection and been an evolutionary dead end, if it had not been infecting that _H. ergaster_ individual at the time.

But the amoeba had been infecting _H. ergaster_ and the recombinant virus had leaked out and it had done so carrying the rather curious set of metabolic genes borrowed from that Bacterium. That particular bacterial strain had gone extinct well over a million years ago, so its weird bit of chemistry would have been lost to the world if it had not been preserved within the blood-drinkers. Humans still had no idea that some of these reactions were possible or that diamond could be put to such effective use in the cytoskeleton of cells and they would never know if my kind had our way.

So our ancestors began to evolve into a form that used their newly acquired metabolic genes to build cytoskeletons of diamond within cells that were strong enough to withstand the most extreme forces and to make our mitochondria, the energy harvesting organelles, ion-tight and vastly more efficient. And it was these new genes that allowed us freedom from our previous dependence on oxygen, which was truly the most unique thing about our kind, because freedom from oxygen dependence was what allowed our bodies to keep going even though our hearts had stopped, but the hearts of these ancestors had not stopped yet.

The first blood-drinking ancestors had fully beating hearts, organs that beat too fast like that of a hybrid and resembled the fluttering of a hummingbird's wings. Those hearts had to beat too quickly in order to deal with the stress that all of those previously foreign chemical reactions caused. The stress made the female's body an inhospitable place for a fetus to be, causing their babies to be born earlier and earlier, and always inside the hard stone protective wrapping.

The early blood-drinkers realized immediately that their babies were not done and so left them in the stone coverings to grow until the normal phase of development was reached. The babies, when they were finally ready, began to use their own teeth to tear themselves free of their stone-like imprisonment. And when the babies began to come even earlier, their parents began to pour blood over the stones to feed them, so that once more their offspring would survive. Like all great apes, our ancestors were deeply emotionally attached to their young and would do anything to save them.

Of course the entire gestation took on the order of a month, so at first the babies were only a few days early and then they were only a week early when they began to pour blood over the stones. But as the stones came earlier and earlier, one lazy husband, the one in the couple Jackson had seen, had had an idea: he swallowed their stone to save them the trouble of spilling precious blood over their offspring for days. The practice was so successful that it quickly caught on and spread throughout the blood-drinkers as a new culture.

This Stone-Eating culture made it possible for the babies to be born even earlier, which was a good thing because the uterus was quickly deteriorating and losing its ability to supply blood to the unborn fetus. The stones would be eaten when they were quite small, just the size of large marbles, and would attach to the intestinal wall of the ancient blood-drinkers. Then, when the time came, the partner would break open the belly to retrieve the baby. Thanks to the miraculously fast healing of the species as a whole, the parent-host would survive. The blood loss would be replenished as the hard stone-skin knit itself back together, repairing and restoring the body to the state it had been before the birth.

Over time the stones turned into the eggs we see today, but it was not until the first blood-drinker became doubly infected that the process required a hominin host and became what it is today. When the second pair of chromosomes infected a blood-drinker, he died. His heart stopped beating and that should have been the end of it, but our species had become resilient to death. We no longer required as much energy and only a tiny fraction of a percent of the oxygen, so he lived yet when his heart stopped.

Hundreds of thousands of years had passed and the first blood-drinkers had become quite well adapted to using all of the new genes acquired from the virus, so much so that a second infection by the virus did not kill them when it stopped their hearts. This new double infection spread like wildfire and the entire species turned cold and hard as their hearts gave out. But although they lived, they could not change, thus they could not grow the eggs within their own bodies.

The eggs were already adapted to latching onto the intestines of hominins and so the first egg to emerge was fed to the closest available uninfected hominin available, which just happened to be a descendent of _H. ergaster_ named _Homo erectus_. _H. erectus_ is often erroneously considered to be a direct ancestor of modern humans, and although this is not the case, they are a close cousin. _H. erectus_ was extremely plentiful and easy to come by, because it had left Africa and ventured as far as Southeast Asia, where it had plenty of room to grow and make lots of blood for parasitic eggs.

The biggest evolutionary hurdle came when the ancestral blood-suckers could no longer lay the perfect, fully formed, marbled-sized eggs. The eggs they had been in para with when they were transformed survived and were implanted into _H. erectus_, but no additional eggs were laid. But although the eggs were gone, the species still multiplied by biting new members. And within a few thousand years a mutation occurred that allowed the eggs to develop in the stomach, surrounded by ample supplies of rich blood. The eggs spread again and the blood-suckers still remembered what they had done with their last few eggs.

Using human hosts was still successful and thus our modern method of egg development inside the stomach and then implantation into a host had evolved, allowing our ancestors to multiply. It was only then that the ancient blood-suckers diverged, with the werewolves splitting off first, and then the shape-shifters and vampires later. And it was only when Jackson's visions of these historic events were added to Allison's scientific knowledge that the picture became complete and merged into the coherent story that my Masen had been weaving together. Instead of creating mischief, Masen had been exploring scientific discoveries in a way not possible without his telepathic abilities working as a link between these two great minds and their respective powers.

I realized what was going on and incorporated all of this new knowledge into my mind within the span of a minute, before turning to my brother who was saying, "What're the little monsters thinking? I know they're up to no good, despite what this one injects into my brain." Here he was clearly referring to Masen, who he was still holding and who was still shielding my brother's thoughts through extension. "Snap out of it and answer me already, Edward!"

Eliza, who was still in my arms, was laughing herself silly and throwing her head back in such a wild manner that I would have dropped her had I been human. "Stupider Uncle!" she chortled.

"Emmett you big goof, why'd you go and upset all of the children?" Rosalie asked, setting Rosita down and preparing to intervene.

"Relax, Em, they were not up to anything. Put my son down and I will explain," I answered.

'Took you long enough,' Masen thought sarcastically, as Emmett handed him over to me. I tucked Masen into my right side, just as I had Eliza tucked into my left, but my daughter quickly bonked her brother on the head. That combined with the fact that Masen was projecting, 'I want Ali and 'Son back,' caused me to set the boy down. He quickly walked back over to his friends and reached out again to Allison and Jackson, and their thoughts disappeared once more.

"I'm going to tell my daddy on you," Allison said.

"And I'm gonna to tell my mama," Jackson added, sticking his tongue out for effect.

'And I'm gonna to tell my mommy that you went along with it, Daddy,' Masen warned me, before returning to his private thoughts with his friends.

"Let them be," I told Emmett, who was on the verge of intervening again. "They really are not up to anything."

And so I spent the next few hours trying to explain our evolution to my brother, while still keeping an eye out for the children.

The clock had not reached five pm yet, but I was all too grateful when the first parents began showing up early. Esme arrived first and I managed to warn her in time, so that she was not ambushed by her grandchildren when she came in to retrieve Aiden and Carl. And then Jasper walked in and stood directly underneath the spot where his youngest two children were lying, or should I say clinging, in wait, with his arms wide open. Ashley dropped down into Jasper's right arm, while Scryan fell perfectly into his left, as if that had been the plan all along.

"Alice will be by in forty-eight minutes for Allison and Jackson and she'll deal with your mistreatment of my children then. I'm to go ahead and start the baths," Jasper proclaimed before leaving with only half of his monsters.

And later, when the remaining children had settled down again, we decided to take them outside to play. Esme even came out of her house with her two children to join in the outdoor excitement.

Aiden and Lily went to work right away on a new epic sandcastle; the last one being destroyed in the night by a couple of escaped grown vampires, although how Jasper managed to talk Esme into watching Ashley in the middle of the night was beyond me. And why he would even want to go to all that trouble just to wrestle with Emmett in the sandbox, I would never understand.

Carl and Rosita took to the slide, for some calmer baby fun.

So that just left Allison, Jackson, Masen, and Eliza, who were all scampering about the tree trunk. The tree was a large pine tree and its location, at the corner of the sandbox, made it the closest to the park. This tree was considered a regular source of entertainment, for the excellent climbing it offered. And although Masen and Eliza had indeed scurried up the trunk and were perched in the branches above, it took me a minute to figure out what Allison and Jackson were doing.

There were a number of animal holes scattered around the base of the tree, and eventually, I saw Jackson reach his hand into a hole in between the roots at the base of the tree and pull out a mouse, which was clawing and screeching, by its tail. A moment later, Allison did the same with her hole and retrieved a second mouse. Then they held the little bodies up in a toast, before bringing the little necks to their lips and drinking.

'I love playing with my food. It's too bad we can't do it when Ashley's around,' Jackson thought to himself while Allison arranged her mouse carcass to make it look like a mouse accident. There was now a large stick carefully laid on top of the body.

And when Jackson flung his mouse up into the air, effectively disposing of it elsewhere, the flying mouse drew my attention up the tree to where Eliza and Masen were. Not only were my children participating in the same activity, but they were also not fighting! This was one to tell Bella about. In fact, I should take a picture, so I did. I got out my cell phone and began recording just as Eliza and Masen each bit into one of the lizards they had caught. They had somehow managed to ambush an entire nest of them, decimating the small population on the island. I continued to film as they divided their catch up equally and drank, before setting the dead lizards on the branch as if nothing had happened to them.

I was still filming the scene when Bella and Carlisle arrived. Bella took my place with the camera, while Carlisle asked, "Edward, are you ready to go?"

"Yes," I answered eager to leave all of the explaining to Emmett. It had all been his idea anyway, so he should have to endure Alice's wrath on his own.

Scryan and Alice had both seen the emergence of Violet in just a few days time, so Carlisle and I had chartered a helicopter to fly us to the village. Yesterday we stopped by the village and gave Nakkertok his latest blood test. It was a fake as always, but this one said that his cancer was back and that he was dying. After we gave him the bad news, we told him that we would be back with a helicopter to take him to a hospital.

Nakkertok's removal went without a hitch and the humans were grateful for our efforts to save the old man; he was the oldest member of their village besides Eohona. He was so old that they would not be suspicious when he did not come back. We will say that the cancer took him despite our best efforts to save him.

The human host was staying in the guesthouse, which was set up with medical equipment. We told him it was a small clinic, the closest one available. Carlisle even sedated him, insuring that he did not feel a thing. He surely would have felt and been aware of more if Emmett had gone ahead with his foolhardy plan to remove his egg prematurely. But ever since Emmett had smelled for himself that she was safe, he had given up his irrational fear. We had made a point to take him with us at least once a month, mostly so that we would not have another Emmett break-down to deal with. But now all of that mess with missing the smell of his host was over and Esme was the only one we would have to keep a watch out for.

Rosalie and Emmett were ecstatic about their new addition. Violet was just as gorgeous as Alice had predicted, with straight dark brown hair just beginning to grow in. It really was hard to look at her perfectly symmetrical features and straight button nose. Emmett had wanted a boy, but three kids were a lot, so he was giving up on that idea. That was why he gave Violet the middle name Emma, because he was no longer waiting for an Emmett junior.


	33. Chapter 31

Edward's POV:

Three years later found Carlisle and myself on another helicopter trip to retrieve another host. Eohona was one hundred seventy years old and the oldest Inuit in recorded history, because her people still did not have regular access to modern medicine and were not benefiting from the anti-aging revolution. Humans in the States now had an average lifespan of two hundred years, with the oldest person on record at two hundred seventeen, but Inuits rarely made it to ninety.

The villagers thought that it was odd that we would invest so much more effort into Eohona's treatment than that of the other villagers. But we claimed to have grown fond of her, so they were not too suspicious and did not object when we flew her away to hospital. She stayed in the guesthouse, just as Nakkertok had before her, surrounded by medical equipment.

The day before the emergence, Esme went to her human and asked if she wanted to be changed. Carlisle stood by as my mother laid out the entire dilemma: an endless life of thirst versus a quick and painless death in a matter of hours. I was surprised when I heard the response, but knowing Eohona, I should not have been.

"No, I'm ready to go. Do you know how bad it hurts to watch your children die? Your grandchildren? Everybody you know? Everybody you've ever met? I can't do it anymore: let me go," Eohona had insisted.

And so we did and Eohona passed peacefully in her sleep. Esme was devastated at first, because she had loved each and every one of our hosts unconditionally and had to stand back and watch as she lost them all. But she was strong and had a new baby to hold to help ease the pain, so I was confident that she would heal in time.

Adriel had short caramel brown hair like Aiden, with a face identical to Carlisle's, except his nose. He had Esme's nose. He was a good-natured happy baby, like all Carlisle and Esme's children. He was a wonderful addition to the family and Esme could not have been more pleased with her new son. He may not have been planned, but he was loved beyond measure. I found Adriel to have a very interesting mind. When I looked into his thoughts I could see the world the way he saw it: malleable.

I could hear Adriel's mind upstairs as Esme rocked him in her arms. She was not attempting to sooth him; she just wanted the very human experience of rocking her newborn child in her arms. He was being a good sport about it, but to make it more exciting, he was altering the space continuum around him, so that he would fall into a dip in space every time she pulled him back towards her. The first time she had experienced the falling sensation while rocking her new son, she found the sensation odd and unsettling. But now she was used to it and considered the experience worth it as long as it meant Adriel would let her rock him _ad nauseam_.

And while Esme bonded with her new son upstairs, Bella and I were taking a break from ours in the living room of the main house. Our children were just a few feet away in the nursery, but Emmett and Rosalie were watching them for us, even though it was a Saturday. We normally did not work on weekends, but we did on occasion drop the children off for an hour or so. It allowed us to free our minds of all of the stress the constant fighting caused. And Rosalie and Emmett did not mind playing babysitter, as long as Bella and I repaid the favor later. There goes our Sunday.

Bella was sitting next to me on the couch with her head laid upon my shoulder, while I wrapped my arm around her. "Do you miss anything about our old life? You know, before the little bloodsuckers came?" she asked me quietly as we listened through the wall to Emmett reading the children a story.

"Well, I miss Nessie," I answered in a whisper, hoping to keep my voice so low that the other occupants of the house would not hear. "She is who I miss the most. Oh, and I miss having a piano in our house. Now I have to come all the way over here if I want to play for you. And this one is bolted to the floor so I cannot even move it to another room."

After all the furniture at our house had been bolted down Eliza and Masen were no longer able to pick stuff up and hit each other over the heads, which just meant they had to get creative. If the piano could not be brought to Masen's head, Masen's head would have to be brought to the piano. Eliza had picked Masen up, one of only two people he could not see coming, and body slammed him head first into my piano.

"I do miss Nessie, but we talk all the time on Skype," Bella replied, tracing the shape of my bottom lip with her index finger. It felt incredible and made me wish that Emmett and Rosalie had agreed to watch our children for the day, not just an hour. "Maybe when Eliza and Masen get a little older they'll stop smashing up the house and you can buy a new piano, but for now you'll have to make do with the keyboards." Keyboards were not nearly as much fun to smash over one's sibling's head, so they somehow managed to remain intact, even though they were not bolted down.

"I wonder why they are so much more aggressive than the other children. You know, if they are separated they play just fine with others most of the time. Why can't they be civil towards each other?" I asked before pressing my lips to her forehead and taking in a lungful of her scent. I still loved her smell.

"Don't you know?" she asked and I shook my head perplexed. "They can't _hear_ each other. They can hear everyone else, except me, but not each other. That's why they don't trust each other, why they dislike one another, snd even why they can sneak up on each other."

"Mmmm." My forehead creased as I thought about that for a second. "I think you are right. Do you think Eliza will ever be able to throw off her shield so Masen and I can hear her?"

"I don't think so. Throwing off my shield's harder than shielding others. Eliza can't even shield others, so she won't be powerful enough to throw her shield off."

"At least Masen's shield is not a problem, thanks to his telepathy."

"No. I can't hear Masen's telepathy unless I throw my shield. I always throw it when he wants to talk to me. Eliza can't throw her shield, so I don't think she can hear him."

"She must be able to hear him, because she responds to things he says," I countered thinking back to all of the times I had witnessed my children interact. Just this morning he had asked her to pass the finger paint and she had complied. Of course finger painting had eventually broken down into a paint flinging war, which was one of the reasons why Bella and I wanted a break today, but that was only after Eliza had passed Masen the paint.

"Not when it's just me and the kids. When you're away, she acts like he doesn't exist and it's not just her ignoring him. I try to keep my shield off for him, but when it snaps back into place I swear she can't hear him."

"Are you sure?" I asked skeptically. In my experience, Eliza always seemed to know what Masen had said to me unless he was shielding me. I could not read her mind, so I had just assumed that she was hearing the same thing as the rest of us when he telepathed.

"Yes, remember when you were gone hunting last week? The kids were playing together on their keyboards and getting along for once, but then my shield slipped back into place. When the song ended, they each went into different songs. Then Masen started crying and when I threw my shield he was telepathing that he didn't know the song Eliza was playing. When I asked Eliza why she made him cry instead of switching songs, she said she didn't hear him. That sort of thing happens all of the time when no one else is around."

"Hmmm…" I mused out loud. "She must be hearing him indirectly through other people. When you throw your shield off, she can read your mind and pick up Masen's telepathy. But when you are shielding, neither of you can hear him.

"Exactly. He doesn't speak out loud, so she has no way of communicating directly with him and can only hear his projections through the minds of others. That's why she hates him so much and why she's more aggressive than he is," Bella deduced. Masen had no need to talk out loud, so he had never tried. He still had not said a single word out loud, which was a fact that I had never thought much about until just now.

We were both quiet for a few minutes while I wondered if Masen knew that Eliza could not understand him, losing myself deep within my thoughts. This was a lot of new information for me.

After a minute, Bella interrupted the quiet by asking, "What're you thinking about?"

"I was just thinking about yesterday when Jasper and I were watching the kids. Everything was fine until Masen started playing with Jackson, who was sharing a vision of snowboarding." He had been trying to convince Jasper for years now that he was old enough for one after getting hooked on the concept from both his visions and his boarding video games. "And then Masen held Jackson's hand. I assumed he was using his telepathy to respond, but the moment they touched I could no longer hear Jackson, because of Masen's shield.

"That was when Eliza came over and punched Masen in the stomach so hard he vomited up blood. A frenzy ensued and Jasper had to crank up the lethargy while we cleaned up the mess. We were hard pressed to dispense enough sippy cups of blood fast enough to curtail the bloodlust."

"Yes, I saw the bite marks. He was still rubbing them this morning." The marks, which were both from Eliza, were no longer painful thanks to Carl, but Masen liked to rub them to get sympathy and attention from Bella. She always fell for it too.

"Well, I was just thinking that maybe Eliza punched Masen because he was shielding Jackson's thoughts. Maybe she was mad because she could not hear Jackson."

"If that's the case, we should tell Masen not to touch the other children. That should decrease the fighting, right?"

"Yes, it should, but it will not do anything about the fact that Eliza cannot hear him," I replied, kissing her nose, her jaw, and her neck. Good thing I asked her to shield me from Eliza and Masen before we started this conversation.

"Well what if we asked him to speak out loud? There's no reason why he can't verbally say the words he thinks."

"Excellent idea my love. We can just ask Rosalie to watch the children for a few more hours, go home real quick, and start on teaching our son to talk tonight," I replied touching my wife in a way that indicated what I had in mind.

"Not right now. We can't leave Em and Rose alone with five baby vampires," she chastised me, batting my hand away.

"Ugh," I grunted trying to return my hand to Bella's warm body, but she just shook her head and batted my hand away. "Please Bella? They will be fine: Esme and Carlisle are upstairs."

"No, you know the rules. We have to be put on the schedule for personal time and get our plans approved and signed in triplicate," she joked, with a smirk gracing her face. Ever since having Masen and Eliza, our love life had lost all spontaneity and been reduced to preplanned dates once every other week.

"Renesmee was never such an impediment," I grumbled, the mood lost among the talk of children.

"Renesmee slept, besides you only have to wait until Thursday. Then we'll have the whole day together to do whatever it's you have in mind."

"Fine," I replied with a crooked smile.

Bella pressed her body up against mine and we shared a sensual kiss before she pulled back and said, "Now let's go get our children and take them home."

I nodded and the two of us returned to the nursery, thanked our siblings for their service, promised to watch their children tomorrow, and returned to our house with our own children.

"I want to play blocks," Eliza said as soon as Bella and I set her and Masen down, after entering our living room.

'No. I want Daddy to sing,' Masen projected into my head.

Bella's shield was still in place, but she was able to tell her son had said something just the same. She looked at him pointedly before saying, "Masen, Mommy wants you to try speaking out loud, like the rest of us."

'No, I want Daddy to sing,' he replied calmly.

"Masen, Eliza and I can't hear you. Could you answer out loud?" Bella persisted, not knowing what her son had said, but able to tell that it was a negative from the look on his face.

'No,' he replied slightly agitated.

"Please Masen?" Bella asked sweetly.

'No!' he screamed in my head, becoming frustrated.

"Why not Masen?" I asked, hoping to diffuse the impending meltdown, but it was too late.

'No, no, no, no, no!' Masen screamed mentally, but the scream that came out of his mouth had no words to it as he shook his head back and forth violently.

"Calm down Masen, your mother just wants to talk with you," I said.

'She's not even listening to me!' he screamed in response.

"Well then make a deal with her: you say it out loud and she will throw her shield and listen to you at the same time."

'I can't!'

"You have not even tried," I countered.

"Masen, will you please try for me?" Bella asked nicely over the wordless screaming.

While Bella's attention was on our son, I caught sight of a block flying through the air aimed for Masen's head. I snagged it out of the air and mentally reprimanded Eliza, who was playing blocks in the corner.

"But he won't stop screaming," Eliza complained.

Masen's screams turned into sobs, so Bella picked him up and cuddled him to her chest as she threw her shield. 'It's okay sweetheart, Mommy loves you. Please stop crying,' she thought while trying to keep thoughts of how much easier Nessie had been out of her mind. We tried not to make comparisons between the children when Masen and Eliza were listening.

'You weren't listening to me.' Even his telepathy had a sob to it. His face was scrunched up like he was upset, but he had none of the human signs of crying. Tears did not pour from his eyes, his cheeks did not flush, nor did his nose run. In other words, it was a typical vampire cry fest.

"I'm listening now," Bella replied.

I began to hum Nessie's lullaby, which was a song I had written for Nessie and sung to Eliza and Masen often, hoping to help calm my son. His sobs died down listening to the song as Bella stroked his back. He let out one last sob as he gulped down a large breath, but he did not speak or telepath, so Bella continued, "Now Masen, Mommy would really love to hear your voice. Can you just say one word for me?"

'No.'

"Why not?" she asked in a concerned, motherly voice.

'I can't.'

"You can't know that you can't until you try," she urged gently.

'I can't,' he persisted.

"If you try and can't do it, then that's fine. The sooner you try, the sooner you can go play. Do you want to pick the first song to play on the keyboard?" Bella asked.

'I want Daddy to sing.'

"Well Daddy can sing as soon as you use your voice," Bella replied. "Just say hi."

'Hi,' Masen telepathed, but all that came out of his mouth was a grunt.

Horror flashed across Bella's mind and face, as her shield quickly recoiled into place. I could only imagine what thoughts were running through her mind; I imagined that they were the same ones I was desperately trying to keep out of my own head. My son was a hundred thirty years old and could not speak. Developmentally, he was a toddler about equal with a two year old human. He should have said his first word already and at least be babbling by now. All of the other children were.

These thoughts tore through my mind, wreaking havoc as I tried to rein them in and stop them. The last thing I wanted was my son to hear my concern, because he already thought he was not capable of speech and he did not need his stupid father reinforcing his fears with my silly mental ramblings. I really needed a shield.

'Don't worry, I'm shielding you,' Bella thought to me at the same moment I began to hear all of her other thoughts.

Throwing her shield so that I could hear her, while projecting it onto both of us, so that the pair of us were shielded from others, was the single hardest thing she could do with her shield. It was so hard that she did not even try it very often.

Bella's thoughts meandered in abject horror, repeating, 'Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no, no,' for a few seconds before she focused her mind on what she wanted to say to me. 'He can't talk Edward! My baby can't speak! What're we gonna do?' Then her shield recoiled and her thoughts were once again hidden from me.

I gave Bella a look that hopefully communicated confidence I did not have and wrapped my arms around her in support. Of course she still had Masen in her arms, who was clearly upset from the silence and about to cry again, but I wrapped my arms around him too, hoping to comfort him.

"Good try Masen," I said and Eliza laughed. I shot her a scalding look, stopping the inappropriate laughter, before continuing. "Why don't you try it again, like this: hi." I drew out the I and enunciated the H, hoping that all my son needed was a little encouragement.

Masen shook his head, but Bella picked up my cue and urged, "Come on Masen, you can do it. Just say hi for Mommy."

Masen did not reply or shake his head, instead choosing to stare at his mother like she was crazy. So Bella continued on, repeating, "Hi," over and over again, with a pause in between to allow him time to say it back.

Several minutes passed like this, but eventually Eliza interrupted, "Please Masen, make her stop! It's just one word."

"Hush Eliza," I reprimanded and my daughter went back to silently playing with her blocks.

It took another few minutes of encouragement, but Masen finally opened his mouth and a tiny little, "I," came out.

Bella's face lit up at the sound and she begun spinning him around in a circle and telling him how proud she was of him. While she was spinning, she must have realized that she was still shielding me and he was trying to project, because she pulled her shield so that I caught the last half of what he was saying, '-rible, she's laughing at me.'

I turned again to look at Eliza, who was not laughing, but was hiding her face and trying to contain her giggles. "Eliza, this is not funny. Your brother just did a very hard thing. You should be happy he said his first word: now he can talk to you," I chastised.

"No he can't! He didn't even say it right," Eliza replied.

"It's okay, don't listen to her. You did wonderfully," Bella tried to sooth Masen, but he started crying again just the same. The fact that she was still shielding her own thoughts was surely less than comforting.

"If you make your brother cry again you are getting a timeout," I warned Eliza.

"Not fair. The baby is always crying," Eliza huffed.

And so I put Eliza on a timeout, while Bella told our son not to listen to his sister, but the damage was already done. Not only did Masen not speak again that night, but we could not even convince him to project again. I felt like such a failure as a father when morning came and I let Bella and Masen go off to Jasper and Alice's house, even though he was not telepathing again yet. But I figured time away from Eliza was the best thing for him.

Being correct about being away from Eliza did not make me feel any better about my failings as a father. It was even worse because it was Jasper and Allison who had gotten Masen to communicate again. You have no idea how awful it felt to know that Jasper did something for my child that I could not. And on top of all of that, I still had to babysit over at Emmett and Rosalie's house.


	34. Chapter 32

Author's Note: Pure fluff depicting life at Rosalie and Emmett's house.

Z

Rosalie's POV:

A little over a hundred years had passed and Violet was now one hundred ten, while Rosita and Lily were two hundred seventeen. All three girls were in the toddler stage, but the oldest two were starting to become a bit more independent, meaning that Emmett and I could leave the room for short periods of time and nothing would be destroyed when we returned. We typically had on the order of minutes to ourselves.

The girls, Emmett, and I had all just returned home from a paintball war. Violet was still too little to play, but Lily and Rosita were excellent shots and had had a blast. Believe it or not, but paintball had been Edward and Bella's idea and was inspired by Masen and Eliza's mutual love for hitting each other on the head, because paintballs cause less harm than fists.

The girls were now filthy and absolutely covered in dried paint, because even Violet had been playing in the splattered paint. Baths were definitely on the agenda for tonight, but first, "Emmett, will you throw out the old flowers? Girls, let's go upstairs and pick some fresh ones."

"Okay my Angel," Emmett said kissing me passionately, while the girls ran upstairs to the small atrium.

Emmett and I tried to grow a garden out front, but none of the seeds germinated, because of the cold. We tried planting artic plants, but they were ugly. So when we had to remodel the house a few decades ago, we asked Esme to add in a small atrium. Even with the skylight, there was never enough light for the flowers, so we have special lamps set up and we even keep the room warm all day long, so now we had all of the flowers we wanted and caring for the plants was part of our evening activities with our girls.

I followed the girls upstairs to find them already watering the plants with the hose. Sometimes the girls made a mess with the water or played around and sprayed each other, but not tonight. Tonight they were watering the plants very neatly.

We have three types of flowers growing: roses, lilies, and violets. There were several lilies in bloom, so I suggested, "Let's cut some of these lilies for the living room."

"Can I do it today, Mommy?" Rosita asked sweetly.

"Yes, it's your turn," I replied and she deftly severed the stems with the shears.

Rosita and Lily take turns cutting the flowers every night, because Violet is still too young.

"Let's go!" Lily shouted. Then she and Violet raced downstairs and Rosita and I followed after with the flowers.

"There my girls are! Did you pick those for me?" Emmett asked with a smile. He bent down and picked Violet up, hugging her to his chest.

"Yes, Daddy," Rosita replied, as I lifted her up and she deposited the flowers in the fresh vase.

"Bath time," I announced. I swung Rosita onto my back as Lily ran back up the stairs.

Emmett took Violet into the purple bathroom, while I followed Lily into the yellow one and she had already stripped by the time I turned the water on. There was no danger of drowning with vampiric children, so our biggest concern was that the kids would flood the house or destroy the bathroom. Once, Rosita and Lily had a fight in the bathroom, and broke through the wall. Lily's room was on the other side and both rooms had to be remodeled, but that did give us the chance to add the atrium. Ever since then, Emmett and I have insisted on separating them for bath time.

Once the water was drawn, I turned off the tap, and Lily dived in sending suds flying. Then I headed to the pink bathroom with Rosita still on my back. She jumped off, while I repeated the drill, drawing her a bath full of water. She hit the floor hard, sending reverberations shuddering through the floor.

"Careful, Rosita, you don't want to break the floor. It's fragile," I reminded her gently.

"Sorry, Mommy," she said, stripping before gently stepping into the tub.

"Much better, sweetie," I replied, reaching for the shampoo.

I washed Rosita's hair and then left her to wash Lily's hair. Once they were clean, I dried them off and sent them to their rooms to dress. Rosita picked out a beautiful princess-style pink dress, which she changed into while I grabbed the brush and blow dryer. Once her blond hair was up in a princess-style bun, I added a tiara.

"There, now you look like the princess you are," I said, leaning down to kiss her forehead.

She giggled and said, "Thanks, Mommy."

I could hear Emmett and Violet playing downstairs, so I knew he was done bathing her. "Daddy's already finished with Violet. Why don't you go downstairs and join them?" I suggested.

"Sure, Mommy," she said before bounding down the stairs, shaking the house.

I went back to Lily's room to find she had already put on the gorgeous yellow dress I left out and was quietly reading a book while waiting for me. I quickly did her hair and then we went downstairs to find Emmett painting toenails. Violet already had lavender nails to match her lavender dress and he was currently painting Rosita's nails pink to match her dress. The sight of my Monkey Man doing nails was so hilarious that I laughed every time. Even though this happens every night, it never gets old.

"What're you laughing at, Angel? Do you need your nails serviced as well?" he asked me, breaking out into that wide grin of his.

"Yes and I hope you have white for Lily."

"I certainly do. I also have red for you."

"But I don't want red today. Do you have any korange?" I asked trying to keep a straight face. I liked to tease him by reminding him of all the pranks the children had played on him over the years. Allison's korange never got old, but normally I brought up the time Rosita bit him at daycare in order to distract him. My poor man had to sit next to Carl all day, because Rosita had wanted to get into his stickers. He had a box full of stickers and the children could earn one if they were well-behaved for the day, but she was covered in them before he stopped nursing the wound.

"No, I'm all out of mythological colors," Emmett replied seriously.

"Maybe you could make some, Daddy," Rosita suggested.

"Yeah, Daddy. Just take the lavender and add some brown," Lily chimed in.

"Please, Daddy? I want korange nails too," Violet begged.

"Vi, you just had your nails painted lavender. I can't possibly paint them korange tonight."

"Fine. Tomorrow then."

"Tomorrow it is," he said, finishing Rosita's nails. She scooted over to make room for Lily, who sat down for her turn. Emmett quickly finished Lily's nails and the girls were off again. "Makeovers complete. Play time."

All three girls jumped up and ran over to their Barbie dream houses, which were lined up against the southern wall. I sat down next to Emmett, as he wrapped his arm around me, kissing me deeply.

"How about you and me have some playtime, baby?" he asked me, pulling back from the kiss.

"We can't," I sighed. "They'll hear."

"But our room has extra sound-proofing."

"Not enough. Besides, who will watch them while we play?"

"How much trouble can they get into by themselves?" he asked, just as Lily used her shield to repel a Barbie into the air. It was on a collision course for the crystal vase of lilies, so I reached up and snagged the doll before it could break anything.

"Never mind," Emmett conceded.

"Lily, you need to be careful with your toys," I said tossing the doll back to her.

"Daddy, my doll broke," Violet announced, bringing a Barbie whose leg had been severed at the knee up to us.

"You have to be gentle with the toys, sweetie. Just get another one."

"But this is my favorite. Please fix it. Please Daddy? For me?" she begged, giving him her puppy dog eyes.

"Okay, this will require major surgery," Emmett answered taking the doll to his evil lair, also known as his office, in the basement. He came back thirty seconds later, having replaced the leg with a fresh one. He had a box of spair Barbie parts for just this type of situation.

"Good as new," he announced, handing the doll back to Violet.

"My hero," I replied, sitting on his lap as he rejoined me on the couch.

"I believe the hero typically receives a kiss from the fair maiden as reward for acts of bravery," Emmett said.

"You're correct," I answered, leaning in for a kiss, just as a chorus of, "Ews!" erupted from our audience. I broke away to see all three girls staring at us with looks of utter disgust on their faces; I guess there goes the idea that we could enjoy a few minutes to ourselves every once in a while.

"Daddy, come play with me," Violet requested, running to him and pulling on his arm.

"No, Daddy, come play with me," Rosita insisted.

"Me too," Lily added.

And since our romantic moment was now over and the mood completely and utterly crushed, Emmett got up from the couch, grabbing a Ken doll, and crawled over to the Barbie houses.

"I'll get you in the morning, Rose, Edward owes me," Emmett called out over his shoulder and his doll was surrounded by three Barbies in desperate need of attention. We had watched Masen and Eliza for Edward yesterday before the paintball war, which typically meant he would return the favor today.

And then Lily came up to me, wanting me to join in the Barbie fun, so I too got down on the ground and crawled over to the toy houses. The five of us played all morning, until the sun came in through the window. Then it was time for blood and stories, and then Bella was ringing the doorbell, so Emmett and I did not have a moment to ourselves.

"Edward and I owe you for yesterday," Bella said when I opened the door. "He thought that I should come get the girls first thing in the morning so that we can get it over with before noon. You know Eliza and Masen are always at each other's throats by noon and I normally take him over to Alice's house."

Emmett must have planned this out with Edward and known Bella was coming so early, because he was reaching for three backpacks that were already packed and ready to go, because we always sent a few changes of clothes and some toys with the girls when they went to other people's houses for the day.

"Now, Lily and Ro, I do _not_ want to hear that you were ganging up with Eliza or Masen. Just because Auntie Bella can't control her children doesn't mean mine have to behave like monsters too. Got it?" Emmett asked as he put a backpack on each child.

"Okay, Daddy," Lily answered.

"Not even a little?" Rosita asked.

"What about me?" Violet added.

"Not even a little, Ro. And Violet, I know you're too much of a princess to ever be mean to anyone. What's that princess pledge again?"

"Okay, Daddy," Rosita replied.

"I promise to be the best princess I can be and treat everyone else like a princess too?" Violet asked.

"Good girls," Emmett said, kissing each girl on the forehead before scooping all three of them into his arms for a hug. "Mommy and Daddy love you. Have fun with Auntie Bella."

And then Emmett put Lily and Rosita down and handed Violet over to Bella, before rushing the four of them out of the house rather quickly.

"Is something going on?" I asked suspiciously.

"Yep, I just emptied the house, so now we have it all to ourselves for six entire hours," he answered with a suggestive smirk.

We went upstairs to our bedroom and straight to our rarely used bed. "Em, I want to talk to you about something," I said, breaking the kiss we had been sharing.

"Now?" he asked, kissing me again and reaching for my shirt.

"Yes now," I answered. He huffed, let go of my shirt, and sat down on the bed, with his hands behind his head, waiting for me to continue. "I was thinking about that conversation we had a long time ago, before Violet emerged. I kind of thought you'd bring this up before now, but, do you want to try for another baby?"

He thought for a few minutes before replying, "I did back then. I was trying to get you and me in para that day, but that obviously didn't work out so well. But right now, I'm happy with our girls. I think we should wait a little while longer. Maybe we could even have a pair of them again?"

"Maybe. I'm really happy with our family the way it is now too, I just didn't want to be the type of wife that says no more kids when you want them."

"We can decide all of that later, Angel. But right now, I really just want to take advantage of the alone time we have together," he replied, before crawling back on top of me and kissing me hard.


	35. Chapter 33

Carlisle's POV:

More time had passed and my sons were now in their second and third hundreds of years of life. Aiden and Carl were finally emerging out of the never ending toddler phase, while Adriel was still our baby.

The others had all gone to their respective homes for the night, so only the five of us were left. The third floor was set up as an apartment, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a living room, but our offices were on the floor below. Esme and I were sitting with our three boys in our private living room, while she read to them the latest story in the Black Dragon series.

The Black Dragon stories became famous about two hundred years after Harry Potter. It starred a small black animal with the body of a sea dragon, but the skin and the fangs of a snake, and the appetite of a vampire. Most of the books were designed for teenagers and filled with epic wars, but Esme had stumbled across a set that was produced for a younger audience. It still featured the same lovable bloodsucking black dragon, but the stories taught lessons on things like sharing with others and cleaning up your room. The books were educational, fun to read, and only induced nightmares in human children. Plus, human society had been trending back towards vampire stories, so throwing in a story about a vampiric dragon gave the humans something new to obsess about, thus regular vampire tales were long forgotten and hopefully would never resurface again.

Esme finished The Black Dragon and Her Biting Problem, and announced, "Time to change clothes!" We did not give the boys baths every night like human children, because they did not get dirty every day, but we did change their clothes, so each boy left for their respective rooms, while Esme and I went to our own room.

We quickly changed and were sharing a sensual kiss when we heard a loud bang from Adriel's room. Loud bangs from his room were not uncommon, but it was cause for concern. In fact, he was given the room closest to our room because of all of the trouble that boy got into.

"Let's go!" I exclaimed, grabbing Esme's hand as we sprinted out into the hall and over to his room.

Adriel, who had not changed his clothes, was standing next to the bookcase, which was lying on the floor.

"What did you do Adriel?" Esme asked.

"I climbed up the bookcase and jumped off."

"Why's the bookcase on the floor?" I asked for clarification.

"It fell when I jumped."

"Young man, I thought we told you not to climb on the furniture and jump off!" Esme used her strictest authoritarian voice.

"You did, Mom."

"Then why did you disobey?" I asked.

"I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry," he apologized and he looked so sad that it crushed my heart.

"Well, you can spend the next five minutes thinking about it on timeout. Go sit on your couch," Esme ordered.

"Let's go see if the other two managed to change on their own," I suggested as we closed the door behind us.

Aiden and Carl have shared a room ever since Adriel's emergence and Esme and I entered said room to find them fencing. The sharp metal swords could not hurt them, but they did leave long gashes in their clothes. Aiden had one long slash across his chest, while Carl had several shorter gashes on his shirt and pants, which by the way were the same ones he had been wearing.

"Why are you two playing instead of changing?" Esme wondered out loud.

"We didn't want to cut our clean clothes?" Carl replied, unsure of his response.

"Sword fighting is an outside activity and you know it. Why were you fencing inside the house?" I asked.

"I saw the swords when I entered and grabbed mine. Carl grabbed his, and then we were playing. I'm sorry Mom and Dad," Aiden answered. At least they were honest about it.

"Well, that means five minutes of timeout for each of you," Esme ordered, and they each sat on their respective couches.

"Let's go enjoy our three minutes of alone time," I whispered in her ear and we went back to the couch in the living room for a make-out session.

But, before Adriel's five minutes were up, we heard another crash from his room, and back down the hall we went. When we opened his door, the bookcase was still on the floor, but now it was joined by his dresser. Adriel was sitting on his couch, with his head down, looking ashamed.

"What happened this time?" Esme asked.

"I was just getting some clean clothes when it fell over," Adriel answered.

"And why'd it fall over, son?" I asked.

"Well, I was sitting on the top, grabbing my underwear, then when I went to slide off, it tipped over."

"I thought we told you _not_ to sit on the top of your dresser when you choose your clothes," Esme scolded.

"Um… yes, Mom. I'm sorry."

"And you're to wait until after your timeout is finished to get dressed," I reminded him. "Timeout is for sitting still and thinking about what you did wrong."

"That'll be another five minutes of timeout," Esme added. "Come on Carlisle, let's go see if the other two managed to complete their timeouts successfully."

But, when we opened Carl and Aiden's door, they were sitting perfectly still with guilty expressions on their faces. "What've you two been up to?" I asked.

"Carl was drawing a picture, but I told him not to. You're not supposed to draw on timeout, Carl," Aiden answered.

"Then why do you also look guilty?" Esme asked.

"Well, I got up off of my couch to punch him for not listening," Aiden replied. He could will peace into existence, but not against his own will.

"Son, do you think that hitting your brother might be worse than drawing?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Aiden replied and he looked like he would be crying if that were possible.

"Okay, another five minutes for both of you," Esme said before following me out of the door. At this rate, they were never going to change their clothes.

Just then, we heard another crash from Adriel's room. The boy was running out of furniture to knock over, which was why we always leave the mess until after the timeout was over. What could it be this time?

Esme and I rushed into the room to find Adriel crawling out from underneath his couch. At least he had been sitting on it like he was told. "Why is the couch sitting on you son?" I asked humorously.

"I was sitting on it and absentmindedly playing with the space continuum," he said standing up. "You know, just strumming the strings? And then the couch flipped. Sorry." He was looking at his feet in shame.

"Are you supposed to be playing with your skill on timeout?" Esme asked, righting the couch. He would need a place to sit for the next timeout.

"No, Mom. I'm sorry," he replied standing still as a statue.

"You know the rule, buddy. Three strikes and you're out. Now Mom will stay and watch you during this timeout. And that'll be another five minutes."

"Yes, Dad," he said sitting back down on his couch.

"Good luck, sweetie," I said, kissing Esme before going back out to the living room.

I waited until Carl and Aiden's time was up, before heading back down the hall. When I opened the door this time, Carl looked guilty while Aiden looked smug. "What's going on this time?"

"Carl was cleaning his paintball gun," Aiden replied as Carl groaned. "I told him not too, but he did it anyway."

"Okay. Carl, another five minutes of timeout and you can serve it in Adriel's room. Mom's already in there."

"Okay, Dad," Carl replied before heading off to Adriel's room.

"Well, Aiden, how about you get dressed now?"

"Sure, Dad."

Without the influence of his brothers, Aiden changed his clothes and was soon ready for the new day, so the two of us went back to the living room together to wait for Esme and my other two boys to finish timeout.

"So, Aiden, are you looking forward to today?" I asked.

"Not really. It's pretty boring," he replied, reaching for his action figure that he had left on the floor.

"Daycare with Emmett and Jasper is boring?" I asked for clarification.

"Yep. It's the same thing every day."

"How so?"

"Well, Emmett goes over shapes and colors and numbers and the alphabet, like we don't already know all that stuff," Aiden began and I nodded, to let him know I was listening.

Emmett had been teaching the children the basic facts for hundreds of years now. All of the children had his preschool curriculum memorized, so I had been telling him for years it was time to move on to something more advanced. And if the kids did not start a fight every time he started teaching, he probably would have listened by now, but as it was, he did not think they had the attention span required for school.

"Then Eliza hits someone and they spend half an hour telling her not to," he continued, almost as if he were reading my mind, or vice versa.

"Then we have wrestling practice the rest of the day and I haven't won yet, even though I'm the tallest," he explained, without looking up from his toy. He was still an inch taller than Scryan, who was the second tallest.

Jasper had stressed the importance of the children learning how to defend themselves in case our island defenses were breached, so he had taken to training them in the afternoons. I had stopped by for wrestling practice a few times, but none of my boys were fighters. Carl was the single worst fighter of the group and Aiden was only any better because he could will his opponent into a peaceful submission, occasionally.

Adriel was not too bad, because he had learned to bend the laws of physics in his favor, tripping up his opponents in a web of gravity. It was hard to stay focused when the attraction between your body and the Earth suddenly increased a thousand fold. But that was all thanks to his talent; skill-wise he was the youngest and therefore one of the slowest and least skilled of the children.

Emmett's children were all mediocre wrestlers, but they were girls, so they did not mind as much. Plus all three could wipe the floor with my boys, especially when using their special talents, so they did not feel as out of place on the wrestling mat as my children. Between Rosita's burn, Lily's shield, and Violet's near invisibility, they could hold their own in a fight.

But it was Masen, Eliza, Ashley, and Scryan that had the most unfair advantage when it came to wrestling, because of their skills. With their ability to read minds, control emotions, and see the future, it was like having two more Edwards and a Jasper and Alice around. And they were all fairly skilled in the art of wrestling, so those four won most of their matches. Although they were all fairly evenly matched between themselves, which made for some interesting matches.

The only two who ever bested the fearsome foursome were Allison and Jackson. Being a hundred years older than the others and Jasper's children, they had several hundred years of private personal training on the others. Jasper had been teaching them headlocks since they were knee-high. Ashley and Scryan had the same amount of personal attention, but they were a hundred years younger and thus always a hundred years behind their older siblings.

"I could talk to Emmett again about beginning some real curriculum. Would you like that?" I asked as I heard Esme, Carl, and Adriel moving from Adriel's room to Carl's room. The timeouts were over, so she should be getting the boys dressed by now.

"What's that?"

"You know, the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic," I explained as I once again heard a door opening.

"Daddy!" Adriel called, running into the room and jumping into my arms at a trajectory that should not have been possible. He had finally changed into clean clothes.

"I like reading, but Carl still likes to put the crayons in his mouth," Aiden replied as Esme and Carl walked into the living room.

"Do not!" Carl retorted, sticking his tongue out at his brother. He and Rosita had had their stomachs pumped for crayons three times now, because for some reason pretty colors and taste were linked in their minds. Either that or Carl was just copying Emmett's daughter.

"Can we go hunting before daycare, Daddy?" Adriel asked me, interrupting the conversation Aiden and I had been having.

All of the children, except for Ashley, liked to hunt and drink fresh, hot animal blood. Allison and Jackson were the first to start picking off local animals for snacks, but when we noticed the others copying them, we decided upon a group hunting trip. There were plenty of artic fox available, so we did not have to take them off the island, which was crucial because we did not want them to leave scent trails into the island.

The first hunting trip had actually been a bit of a disaster before it had even started, because Ashley refused to participate. Jasper had spent hours just trying to talk his daughter into it and as soon as he did, Alice and Scryan saw what a disaster it would be, and Ashley had been allowed to stay home after all.

Ashley was extremely sensitive to emotions, even animal emotions as it turned out. Alice and Scryan each had a vision of her freaking out when exposed to the emotions associated with the animals as they realized their deaths were imminent. This was because although animal emotions were not as strong as human emotions, animals still had emotions and the tasty ones were smart enough to know when death was coming. So she had never learned to hunt and remained on an all synthetic blood diet. We were a bit concerned that she was not learning to be a vegetarian, like the other children, but if she could not bear to eat animal, then it was unlikely she would be a danger to humans.

"Not this morning, son, but we can go this weekend," I answered Adriel.

"Yay!" Adriel exclaimed before jumping off of my lap. Whenever he jumped near me, I experienced an eerie dizzying sensation, due to the fact that the boy never jumped without messing with the laws of physics. And as further proof that he was at it yet again, he rose higher in the air than should have been possible given the force with which he had taken off with, and he landed light as a feather on the carpet floor, not making a sound.

"Adriel, remember when Mommy said not to jump in the house?" Esme asked.

"But, Mommy, I did it softly, just like you said!" Adriel exclaimed.

"We only have thirty minutes left until Emmett shows up for daycare. We should take them outside first to get the rough-housing out of their system," I suggested, pulling down coats from the coatrack.

Everyone agreed, so my three boys and I went to play outside, while Esme warmed up several cups of blood. She brought the blood outside for the boys and Adriel managed to take a break from his antics on the playground bars just long enough to drink his breakfast.

Esme had added the monkey bars and two pull-up bars to the park eighty years ago. Most of the children thought said park was lame and my wife thought that adding some new playground equipment would spice the place up and make it more fun, but I have been regretting the decision ever since. The way all of the kids played on the bars would have given me a heart attack if I were human, and the way my youngest son played was even worse. The other children just spun around the bars at super speeds while hanging from their knees, but Adriel was letting go, practically flying up into the air, and making a figure eight between the two bars every time he spun around.

As for the monkey bars, the other children were content to do them upside down, with their feet up in the air and their hands swinging along the upper surface of the bars or running over the top of the structure, but not Adriel. Adriel liked to utilize the underside of the structure, like a human, but upside down with his feet hanging onto the bars. He swung across the bars with his feet like he was an orangutan. Orangutans, by the way, had gone extinct in the wild once, but the species was revived using cryogenically frozen orangutan embryos and captive breeding programs.

And since my boys were having so much fun on the bars, Emmett decided to start the day with playtime and let his girls join in in the fun when he arrived. Rosalie came with him and Esme was still around, so I decided to take the opportunity and talk to Emmett about starting a more challenging curriculum for the children.

"Emmett, I think it's time to start thinking about schooling the children," I said, taking him aside. "Allison and Jackson would be starting Kindergarten if they were humans. If we need to assign more adults to control the kids and keep them on task, then we'll just have to do that."

"I don't know… they're still really young. What's the rush?" he asked.

"The children are bored with the same old ABCs every day. They're getting older and growing up. They won't stay babies forever."

"I'll think about it, but I'm not even sure where to start. They still smash their crayons into the paper when they're coloring."

"Then start with that. Teach them how to color softly today and before the year's out, they'll be able to hold a pencil."

"I'm not sure the younger ones are old enough yet. Violet and Adriel are practically still babies and Ashley and Scryan aren't that much older."

"But both Scryan and Ashley can hold a paintbrush and color without destroying the crayons. Alice has even taught Ashley to sketch with a pencil already. Scryan's a bit less artistic, but the point is that they're not too young to learn. Maybe you could ask Alice to come and help you. With three adults you'll be able to control them more easily and give them more individual attention."

"Alice's children have been sketching for hundreds of years now…" Emmett trailed off and I could tell he was considering my suggestion seriously.

"We can even add a fourth person for the first year, until they get into the routine," I added.

"Okay, we can work on coloring today and I'll start putting together a Kindergarten curriculum," he agreed. "But I want Esme to help; maybe we can talk about it this evening."

"Good man," I said clapping him on the back and steering him back over towards the children.

And just like that, we were determined to set our children upon the shining path of education.


	36. Chapter 34

Edward's POV:

Another hundred years had passed and Violet and Adriel were now three hundred years old and the size of four year olds. Eliza, Masen, Carl, and Rosita were all four hundred years old and the size of five year olds. Allison and Jackson were five hundred and were the size of six year olds. Scryan and Aiden were the tallest of the children and were taller, but skinnier, than Allison and Jackson. Ashley and Lily, on the other hand, were the shortest and were shorter than Violet and Adriel.

Our efforts to start schooling our little monsters were really paying off. We started off by adding desks to the nursery room and using that as the classroom, but it was too crowded, so Esme built a small building on the other side of the playground, specifically designed to house our new school. Emmett was assigned teaching detail, because of his teaching credentials. And because he could not control all twelve of them, Jasper was their other permanent teacher. The rest of us also pitched in for specific subjects, but we did not stay the entire day.

Vampiric children learn quickly, so they had all been reading for years. Esme helped out in the morning during reading time and she had them all reading The Black Dragon series. Then it was history with Jasper and a short recess. After that it was math time, which Bella helped with, followed by anatomy with Carlisle. Then they had a longer recess on the playground, before their afternoon classes.

The first class after recess was writing, which was the most difficult subject to teach, because it involved such fine motor skills. Alice was helping out with writing and their first lesson was how to not break the pencils. The thin wooden sticks filled with graphite crumbled so easily and the kids really had to concentrate on controlling their strength to write with them.

Pencils also made excellent projectiles. Masen had a note sent home last week that he had thrown one into the wall, eviscerating the plaster. Scryan's desk was on the other side of the room from his, so he had no way of shielding the boy's thoughts. Consequently, Eliza saw the pencil coming in Scryan's visions and ducked out of the way, letting the projectile continue on its course until it hit the wall.

Masen's punishment was to help Esme repair the hole, which was a bit more complicated given the extremes Alice and Esme had gone to in order to build such durable walls in the first place. All the inner walls in the school house were made out of reinforced sheets of Kevlar, which was then spackled over with plaster to make it look like a wall. This gave the walls strength, flexibility, and a certain resistance to projectiles, with the decorative plaster being the weakest link. It was indeed the plaster that Masen had damaged and would have to repair.

Bella and I had spent the last several hundred years teaching Masen and Eliza how to get along. They were pretty good about not destroying the house and furniture at home, but at times, they could still be a bit destructive with their violence and they often got notes sent home from school for fighting and throwing things at each other.

We bought all new furniture, which lasted a lot longer now that the children were growing up. The first piece of furniture I bought was a piano, which allowed me to give my children lessons on a high quality instrument. And now that school was in session, Emmett had asked me to help out with music hour and teach all the leaches to play. Music class was in the afternoon, right after writing hour, so it was the last class of the day before wrestling practice.

Rosalie, being the second best musician in the family, was my co-instructor. The two of us would arrive a few minutes early and waited for Alice to finish her writing class, before we started music. We always started class the same way, by first walking the group of children across the hall to the new music room, which was set up with one piano, a number of keyboards, and a few violins.

We did not have enough room for a piano for everyone, so the room was filled with keyboards instead. And since I had already taught Eliza, Masen, Allison, and Jackson to play the piano, they had been moved onto the violin. It would be a few more years yet before I had the lot of them turned into a real symphony with violas, cellos, and a string bass or two, but four violins and eight keyboards was a start.

After music, was wrestling, so I would pack up my sheet music and stick around for another hour, because Emmett and I were assigned to help Jasper out with wrestling practice, which was held on a cleared patch of dirt just outside the schoolhouse. We wanted the children to be well rounded and able to defend themselves if need arose, and that meant wrestling every afternoon. This way, our little bloodsuckers would not be sitting ducks if the Volturi came for them.

But not every day was filled with lessons: some days were exam days. Now that the bloodsuckers were in school, tests were a part of our lives. Said testing invariably had mixed results and we quickly realized that we were testing their cheating abilities more than their ability to retain knowledge. Many of the children were frequently caught off topic, but received high marks, so we knew they were cheating.

Eliza looked to Emmett and Jasper's memories of preparing the tests to learn the answers, even though they made sure not to think the answers to prevent Masen's cheating. But, Masen would just get the answers from one of the other children instead, so there really was no point. As long as someone in a three-mile radius thought the answers and was not being shielded by Bella, he knew. Same with Eliza, only the person did not need to be actively thinking about it.

During tests Jackson looked to visions of the lecture that he had not bothered listening to in order to fill in all of the answers. And Scryan would look to the future when he would get the test back with his wrong answers crossed out and the correct ones circled in red ink. Then he would change his answers accordingly. Whenever Ashley did not know an answer she would call Emmett over and ask a leading question. He would refuse to answer it, but his emotions would give the correct answer away. Her cheating was slightly more work and less accurate, but if she paid the slightest amount of attention while actually in class, she would ace the test.

Allison had a natural advantage with math and anatomy, while Jackson had the advantage with history. And Alice's children were excellent writers, because of all of the time they spent on art work at home. So even though it was harder to fake writing because it involved learning motor skills, they did well there too.

The other children actually had to pay attention in class and rely on their perfect vampiric memories. That is, unless they bribed Masen beforehand, which was not hard to do. My son was amazingly corrupt. He would transfer answers from Allison, Scryan, and Jackson into the minds of anyone who was willing to pay his fee. So it came to be that mine and Bella's presences were required at all examinations.

If Jackson or Scryan looked for visions of answers they automatically failed. Eliza and Masen's cheating was harder to circumvent, which was where Bella came in. She shielded everyone's thoughts from the mind-reading duo. And I made sure Masen was not touching or shielding anyone else and observed the other children's thoughts to ensure that no cheating ensued. As for Ashley, I was a bit stauncher with my emotions than Emmett, so it was left up to me to refuse to answer her questions.

And so cheating was curbed, but not eliminated. The little monsters just became more creative with it and they learned to not think of how they were cheating to avoid my scrutiny. It was The Red Queen Effect in action, because every test they would devise a new way to cheat and every test I would find a new way to counter it. Now I had a new method of cheating to monitor for every test.

Today was the last Friday of the quarter, which meant it was a major test day, so Jasper and Emmett took the day off, headed out on a hunting trip, and left the exams behind for Bella and me. The tests were going well, with no signs of cheating, and for a moment I thought that we might get through an entire exam without supernatural cheating.

I must have jinxed the test with such absorbed thoughts, because halfway through I began to notice an odd pattern: all of the children not only knew all of the answers, but they had the same correct answers. Their answers were the same, right down to the essays being eerily similar. I checked Allison for electronic transmission devices, the method they had used last time, but came up empty. They really had nothing on them and they probably would have gotten away with it if it were not for their weakest link.

Eliza was a horrible liar, so she would have been the weakest link if not for her shield. In reality it was Aiden with his conscience that tended to be the easiest to crack, so I made it fairly obvious that I was suspiciously observing his every move. It only took three minutes for him to give and start thinking about the answers Scryan had passed around the day before.

Emmett and Jasper had written the test early that morning, right before heading out, but they had made the mistake of deciding what to put in it days ago. By yester evening, the composition was mostly set in stone, even though neither teacher had discussed it or agreed to it. Scryan simply chose the future with the test he wanted and passed out the answers. In return, everyone who wanted the answers forked over their allowance, providing Scryan with enough money to order a new snowboard. Snowboards were very popular among the children at the moment, although they were rather fragile and had to be replaced frequently.

And as it turned out, all eleven of the others just happened to want the answers. Even Allison did not know every subject and had been daydreaming during so many lessons that she was worried about possibly receiving a poor grade. But now that Aiden had given them away, I called the test to a halt, ripped them up, and announced the Fs that would be going home to their parents. It would be nice if we could get just one accurate measurement on how much they knew and even a C would look good on the refrigerator next to all the Fs.

With no test to finish, school was dismissed early today. And with Jasper and Emmett away hoping to catch a few walruses, this meant that both Alice and Rosalie were left alone, all day and all night, with their children. This was not a problem in Rosalie's case, because she had no problems handling her three girls. Alice, however, could not watch all four of hers at once, especially not for the twelve additional hours it would take Jasper to return.

Jasper could not be called and asked to return sooner, because he had not taken his cell phone with him hunting. Although now that they were waterproof up to two thousand feet, maybe he should start, because even with Alice's vision, things like this still happened.

Alice could watch only three of her children at a time before her monsters overwhelmed her and it was a very specific three: Jackson, Allison, and Scryan. Ashley was the biggest problem causer, because she liked to play pranks. Scryan was a prankster too, but only when Ashley was around. So whenever Jasper had to step out at night, he always took Ashley with him.

I knew from Alice's thoughts that she did not want to ask others to watch her troublesome monsters, so instead of sending Ashley away during hunting trips, she sent Allison and Jackson. They were much better behaved and did not embarrass her when they spent the night away from home. And removing the well behaved leaches from the situation reduced the targets for pranks, making Scryan and Ashley easier to deal with. Thus when school let out early, Esme picked up her own three boys along with a fourth for the night: Jackson.

While my parents were watching Jackson, Bella and I were watching Allison. We let the kids play outside until five, to blow off some steam. Then we started off the evening with painting to make Allison feel more at home, because Alice has art time with her brood every night. The painting went smoothly at first, but eventually Masen and Eliza started throwing the stuff at each other. Allison ducked out of the way, but Eliza and Masen needed baths.

Bella had bathed Masen first and was currently upstairs bathing Eliza, and while my wife was bathing his sister, a freshly cleaned Masen was sitting quietly in the corner holding Allison's hand. Masen was shy around Allison. Normally he was an out-going touchy-feely type kid, always holding hands, but with her he was quiet and even more insistent on constant skin contact. She calmed him down.

Allison was sitting next to Masen in the corner, holding hands and looking bored, as usual, so I decided to pester her with questions, as always, because that was my way of keeping her entertained. "Allison, why is Scryan taller than Jackson. Jackson is a hundred years older, so he should be taller."

"Maternal effects," she answered out loud, because Masen was shielding her from me.

"Maternal effects?" I asked.

"Yes, maternal effects occur if there's a difference between the two parents, when both parents are capable of being the mother. It matters which parent is the mother. In humans, the female is always the mother, so they don't notice the maternal effects. But in hybrids, like tiglons and ligers, we notice."

'What are tiglons and ligers?' Masen asked telepathically to all of us.

"Tiglons and ligers are both lion slash tiger hybrids. But, the tiger's the mother of the liger, while the lion's the mother of the tiglon. Tiglons weigh less than both lions and tigers, while ligers weigh more than both parents, because of epigenetic imprinting. A growth gene is turned on in the copy inherited from the female tiger and the male lion. This same gene is off if inherited from the male tiger or the female lion.

"An offspring is normal sized if it has one copy of the gene on and the other off. Ligers have both copies on and are huge, while tiglons have both off and are small. Since the difference is caused by which parent is the mother, the phenomenon is referred to as maternal effects. The same concepts hold with vampires.

"Vampires have imprinted genes that differ between the male and female?" I asked for clarification.

"Yes. It matters which parent's the 'mother,' or more accurately, the egg bearer, or cotia. Epigenetic modifications are influenced by which sex one's egg-bearer is. Females are typically smaller than males, so a female would benefit from having a smaller child than the male.

"A smaller child is easier for a smaller person to carry. The cotia needs to be able to carry the offspring in his or her arms during the dependency phase, to protect it from harm. If the offspring is too large, it's more likely to be killed by rivals, so the eggs born to female cotias are shorter than those of male cotias.'

"Then why are you and Jackson the same height? And why are Masen and Eliza the same height? Should Eliza and you not be taller because your cotias are male?"

"Gender of the offspring also plays a role in height determination. My cotia is male, but I'm female, so I'm average height. Jackson's male with a female cotia, so he's also average height. Same with Eliza and Masen. Aiden and Scryan are the tallest, because they're male with male cotias."

That was when Eliza ran down the stairs at lightning speed and jumped into my lap, finally done with her bath. "Music time," she trilled in her ringing voice.

"Allison, do you want to play with us?" I asked. She had been learning violin at school and had already mastered piano. We had both in the house.

"Sure!" she exclaimed, sounding excited for once. Masen had already run into the music corner, strapped on his bass guitar, and was tuning his instrument. He was also learning violin at school and had the piano mastered, but at home he was glued to his bass.

"Come on, Ali!" Eliza sang as she danced over to her electric guitar that she had gotten for her most recent birthday.

'Is Mom coming? She's shielding,' Masen projected so everyone could hear, except Eliza and Bella. Everyone thus amounted to Allison and myself.

"Bella, Masen is calling for you again," I said out loud so that she would know to throw her shield.

If Bella was in the same room with him, she could tell when he wanted to "speak" whenever he caught her eye, but if she was not in the same room, communication was much more difficult. Masen had suggested using Morse code tapped out on the floor, but she refused based on principle, because she wanted to force him to speak out loud for Eliza's benefit. They had eventually settled on a texting compromise, which meant he was allowed to communicate with her through texting whenever they were not in the same building.

At the time, which was almost a hundred years ago now, we had of course hoped that getting Masen his first cell phone would encourage him to speak, because it was impossible to telepath through a phone, but Masen had just gotten frustrated and smashed that phone to pieces. Bella had been upset over the lack of effort on his part, but he was still so little and he just started crying, so she eventually gave in, pulled out another phone, and taught our son to text. He has been texting ever since.

"Masen! What've I told you about using your telepathy in front of Eliza?" Bella asked as she came in and took a seat at her drum set. She was not particularly musical when we met, but with as many years to practice as we have had, she was definitely improving.

"S- s- s- s- 'rrry E- i- e- li- i- li- zaaa. I o- a- o- ossed iii' iii' M- m- m-m- um 'as c- c- c- c- cooommm- mim'," Masen stuttered at barely a whisper, mispronouncing all of the words, despite his best effort not to. His speaking voice was a higher pitch than his telepathic voice, as well as being raspy from disuse.

I had never met a stuttering vampire before, but that was not the worst of Masen's speech problems. He spoke so quietly that despite our super hearing, it was difficult to hear him if there was any other noise in the room. And if he spoke quickly, he would mispronounce the words so badly that his speech was incomprehensible. At least when he slowed it down his pronunciation was not as bad and it was easier to understand him, even if the stuttering was the trade-off.

Masen's speech was most similar to that of deaf humans who try to speak aloud even though they were unable to hear the words coming out of their own mouths. Although he could hear fine, the muscles necessary for speech had never been used or trained sufficiently to make the correct sounds. He hated how he sounded and especially hated practicing, because Eliza would make fun of him for it, so his speech was still highly flawed, despite the progress he had made.

In fact, teasing Masen about his speech was one of Eliza's hobbies, to the point where it was her most frequent cause of grounding, even more so than cheating. Once when they were a little over two hundred, Bella had sat Masen down with a book of animals and tried to teach him to say the names. But when they had gotten to duck, and Masen replied, "Guck," Eliza had started laughing hysterically. And ever since then, he has refused to say duck and she has teased him mercilessly about gucks. So it was a common occurrence for me to say the phrase, "Sorry, Eliza cannot play today: she is grounded for saying guck again."

So I am sure you can understand why Bella and I spent the next several minutes praising Masen for his extremely articulate, for him, reply, before we broke into our usual all night jam session. This one turned out to be particularly successful because we learned how well Allison could sing. A lead singer was the one thing our little band was lacking and we would have to invite her over more often.


	37. Chapter 35

Alice's POV:

Allison and Jackson's six hundredth birthday and Ashley and Scryan's fifth hundredth birthday party was today. The four birthdays were all within a month of each other, so we always lumped them together and just threw one big party. We served blood, played games, and opened presents; typical birthday stuff. Then we had snowboard races, snowball fights, and paintball wars.

And there were presents, of course. All four received a new snowboard from Jasper and me. Bella and Edward gave them each a book; WWII for Jackson, Einsteinian physics for Allison, cartoon sketching Ashley, and a children's book about how nice it is to be tall for Scryan. Esme and Carlisle gave them bicycles, which were all destroyed before three hours were up. The Darwinian things went so slow that Jackson hit his in frustration, smashing it to bits. Allison crashed hers into Carl, mangling the front end. Emmett tried to straighten it out, but the metal snapped. Ashley popped the tires on hers trying to jump over some boulders. And Scryan accidently tore the handle bars off when trying to steer.

Jasper and I groaned when Emmett and Rosalie gave them baseball bats and a large supply of balls. It only took Ashley and Scryan twenty minutes to get theirs taken away for throwing them at the other kids. The balls disintegrated on impact or were caught with perfect precision and thrown at another head. But Jackson and Allison had not joined in in the mayhem, so they had been allowed to keep their balls. Jackson wanted to play a real baseball game, so he had stayed out of the fight.

Allison, however, could not figure out what she was meant to do with hers. Jasper tried to show her that it was fun to throw the balls back and forth and hit them. He tried to manipulate her emotions so that she would have fun, but Ashley was contradicting his manipulations, because she was mad that her balls had been taken away. So, Allison just rolled her eyes and asked Scryan for a baseball free future. He had already lost his balls too, so he obliged and the baseball game we had planned was canceled.

We stayed out partying until twelve am, before gathering up the little monsters and heading home. Jasper and I made it our policy to be back home by midnight, to keep the children on a schedule. And since the little leaches were caked in grime from the party, we started with baths. I do the baths on weekdays, but Jasper does them on the weekend.

Baths were a one on one event whenever I was home, but Jasper would turn on the calm and do them all at the same time when I went out hunting. When the children were younger, I looked forward to seeing those scenes in my visions, because the children would alternate between causing absolute chaos and being so nearly comatose that their heads slipped into the water, unable to hold themselves up with Jasper's lethargy. Hitting the kids with a blast of lethargy was his secret weapon to being able to control all four of them on his own, although now that they were growing up, they had learned to behave better around him, so he rarely had to break out more than the calm.

Tonight, Jasper took Allison up stairs for her bath, leaving me with Jackson, Scryan, and Ashley. I was urging them to calmly play a board game with me when I had a vision. As I was having the vision it came to fruition and Jackson fell to the floor screaming. One glance at Ashley and Scryan and I knew who was to blame, because they both wore suspicious smirks on their faces.

"Ashley, stop hurting Jackson right this minute!" I tried to sound tough, but the kids were all only half a foot shorter than me. They took after Jasper in the height department, so I had no physical stature to fall back on.

"I'm not doing anything to him, Mom! I don't have a venom burn like Angie," Ashley lied while Jackson curled up into the fetal position sobbing.

I took my baby into my arms, and spoke fiercely, "Ashley, you're to go to your room and have five minutes of timeout. Your father's going to be very disappointed in your behavior when he hears about this."

"But I didn't do anything!" she protested.

"Go now. Don't make me take you up there," I ordered. Jackson had finally stopped dry sobbing.

"No! I won't go! I didn't do it!" she continued to protest. So I transferred Jackson to my back and scooped Ashley up, depositing her in her room.

Then I went back downstairs to confront the other monster, "Scryan, what did you and Ashley do to Jackson?"

"Uh… I wasn't involved?" he said it like a question.

"Wrong answer. Go upstairs for five minutes of timeout for lying," I ordered. I could not believe my eyes! _He_ went upstairs to his room, _no_ back talk, and _no_ additional lies. Why was it that Jasper's eggs behaved more civilly than my own?

Once we were alone, I removed Jackson from my back and sat with him on the couch. "What'd she do you, 'Son?"

"It was awful. She made me feel terrified."

"It's okay, 'Son, you're safe now. Let's go see if Daddy's ready for you." I kissed Jackson on the forehead and took him upstairs.

Jasper was just wrapping a towel around Allison and sending her to her room to get dressed. "Perfect timing your majest-" He paused mid-sentence. "What happened to Jackson?"

"Ashley and Scryan. What else?"

He groaned and replied, "These practical jokes have to stop."

"I put them both on timeouts. Speaking of which, they should be done now," I said handing over the poor victim before going to release the perpetrators.

Ashley was in her room sitting on her couch. There was no bed, because there was no need and no room for one. The four children's bedrooms were small, to make room for the walk-in closets. "Have you thought about what you did?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"And? Are you ready to apologize to Jackson? That was inexcusable behavior."

"Can't I just have another timeout?"

"You can have another, but it won't get you out of apologizing. If you want, you can sit in here until Dad's done with all of the baths." I hate that I have to resort to threatening her with Jasper, constantly. She is my egg, she should listen to me.

"Okay. I'll apologize."

We walked to the bathroom, and I announced, "Ashley has something she'd like to say."

"I'm sorry, 'Son." Ashley barely squeaked out.

"'S okay, Ash," Jackson replied.

"Okay, Ashley, go wait in your room while I talk to Scryan.

"I can't believe Scry ratted me out," Ashley muttered under her breath as she went.

I did not feel like admitting that he did not in fact rat her out, so I let it go. She went back into her room and I found Scryan lying on the floor having a vision.

"Scryan, you know you're not allowed visions on timeout." He did not respond. He must have been in his vision so deep that he could not sense me. Edward told me that Scryan's visions, unlike my own, feel one hundred percent real and he cannot even perceive the real world. I can always perceive the real world in the background of my visions, so I decided to wait it out. That, however, did not last long, because he momentarily started to scream.

"Scryan, snap out of it," I begged, shaking his shoulders.

When he still did not respond, I knew it could only be one thing: a vision of Ashley. Ashley knows that she does not have to actually mess with Scryan's emotions. All she has to do is _decide_ to, so back down the hall to Ashley's room I went. As I left Scryan withering on the floor in pain, I was torn. I wanted to pick him up and comfort him, but I knew that would do no good. He would not stop hurting unless I stopped Ashley, and he would not be aware of my efforts when he did. There was no way to comfort him.

I wanted to carry him with me to Ashley's room, but his limbs were flailing about chaotically. Being the tallest of the children at four feet seven inches he was just three inches shorter than me. He was not just the tallest of my own but of all twelve, because in the last decade he had grown another inch, officially surpassing Aiden in height, although not in weight. I could easily lift Scryan's weight; that was not a problem, but carrying him was awkward at the best of times, because of his height. When he was flailing like this, it just was not possible, so I turned and left him there in order to find Ashley.

"Stop deciding to hurt Scryan right now, young lady!" I ordered as I entered her room.

"I didn't decide to do it. I was just thinking about doing it. Honest." She actually looked like she might be telling the truth this time.

"Well, if that's true then you won't have a problem repeating that statement to your father, will you?"

"No ma'am." When she was not causing so much trouble she was actually pretty cute the way she copied Jasper.

I decided to take her to Jasper, ask if she was lying, and looked to the future for the answer. I found the vision:

_So, back to the bathroom we went. "Repeat it," I instructed Ashley._

_"I did not decide to cause Scry pain manipulating his emotions. I was only thinking about doing it," she said, looking down at her shoes._

_"She's telling the truth," Jasper said smiling at me encouragingly. I could feel the emotions he would send me: pride, love, and support. He must think I am doing a better job at this than I realize. "Ashley, you aren't to think about hurting Scryan. In fact, you're to decide right now that you will _not_ hurt him," he ordered while washing Jackson's long hair._

_"Okay, Daddy."_

"_Now, go back to your room and wait for me," I instructed. She does so without talking back and I have a suspicion this is mostly for Jasper's benefit._

The vision ends and I nod my head once. "Ashley, Dad says you aren't lying, but you're to decide right now that you're _not_ going to hurt Scryan."

"Okay, Mommy."

"Good. Now stay here until I come back for you."

So I headed back to Scryan's room. He was out of the vision and dry sobbing on the floor, so I ran over and picked him up. "Shh. It's okay Scry. Ashley isn't gonna hurt you now."

"I didn't mean to, Mommy!"

"Shh. You didn't mean to what, Scry?"

"I didn't mean to scry. I wasn't looking. I swear to Darwin I wasn't!"

"It's okay, Scry. You're not in trouble. Mommy's got you."

"I'm not in trouble for having a vision on timeout?"

"Were you looking for a vision?"

"No. I was sitting down on timeout like you said."

"Well, then you're not in trouble. You're not allowed to look for visions, but if one finds you there's nothing you can do to stop it."

"I love you, Mommy."

"I love you too, Scry. Now, let's go get Ali and Ash. Okay?" I asked and he nodded. I picked him up, and we went off to retrieve the other two leaches.

On the way back to Ashley's room I felt a wave of mischievousness, playfulness, and happiness wash over me, which was Jasper's nickname for Ashley. Jasper has an emotional nickname for each of us, chosen based on our own most frequently emitted emotions. Mine was love, joy, and hope. Scryan's was stoicism, determination, and contentment. Allison was confidence, love, and happiness. Jackson was love, calm, and content. Whenever we felt these mixes of emotions, we knew Jasper was calling.

Ashley opened her door and saw me. "Mom, Daddy's calling me."

"I felt it. It's your turn for a bath, go ahead," I said as Jackson exited the bathroom heading to his room.

"Thanks, Mom," she replied heading to the bathroom and Scryan and I went to Allison's room.

Allison was reading her new book, fully dressed, waiting for me. Being the most mature of the children, she was aware of the chaos I had been dealing with and was trying to stay out of it. "Hi, Mommy!"

"Jackson just finished his bath, so let's go back downstairs."

"Sure. Come on, Scry," she said taking Scryan's hand and leading us into Jackson's room.

Jackson had dressed and was attempting to pull a brush through his long hair. "Mama? Thank Darwin! The brush's stuck, again."

"Here, let me help you," I replied, detangling the brush from his hair. I quickly brushed the tangles out and added a hair tie in what Jasper refers to as, "The elf style."

Then the four of us went downstairs, sat on the couch in the living room, and waited for Jasper to finish up. "Who wants to play videogames?" I asked. There was still another bath and a half to get through and I needed a distraction to entertain the children, or I would never make it.


	38. Chapter 36

Alice's POV:

Another hundred years passed without any significant changes. The children were another hundred years older, passed a few more mile markers, and had all grown a few inches taller. Allison and Jackson were eight hundred, while Ashley and Scryan were now seven hundred, which meant that my babies were growing up and becoming more mature and independent and I was doing all right with that.

Jackson still moved from one extreme sport to the next and right now it was hang gliding that had him bouncing off the walls and begging for a camping trip every weekend. Allison still loved all things science related, but Masen and Eliza had gotten her hooked on the guitar. The three of them had a little band going and Allison was even the lead singer. Allison and Jackson were still the best of friends and they were hands down the most scholarly of the children, because they could pass entire days curled up together with their respective textbooks.

As for Ashley, she still loved practical jokes and lately she had been trying to catch Aiden off guard and jump down on him from the ceiling. Scryan would invariably assist in the latest prank and I began to think of him as her lackey. Ashley being the dominant member in their partnership was a bit comical given the two feet in height he had on her. It made him look so much older than her, even though he was in fact half an hour younger. But despite her short stature, Ashley was the leader and Scryan had learned to go with the flow.

Scryan was the only one who ever grew fast enough to see it, because he could grow up to a centimeter in a single year. In fact, he sprouted up a full twelve inches in only a fifty year time period. He was tied with me for height a hundred years ago, so now he was a foot taller than me and gaining on Jasper quickly. And although it looked incredibly odd for my husband to do so, he would still pick Scryan up, all five feet and nine inches of him, and carry him around like the young child he was.

Scryan had the emotional maturity of an eight year old, even though he had the body size of a teenager. Eight year old humans like to cuddle and my baby was no exception. In fact, he was a very sweet and cuddly little boy, who had recently taken to picking me up so that I could be at his level when he wanted a hug. Every night, while the others would paint or draw, he would climb into my chair with me and cuddle. It honestly felt like I had a giant for a son.

Tonight was no exception and Scryan was currently snuggled into my side, with his knees bent, his legs curled up, and his neck bent down to rest his head on my shoulder. And while Scryan cuddled, Allison, Jackson, and Ashley were sketching. Jasper was reading a book in the corner and enjoying the peace immeasurably. Jasper loved having the children more than I could have ever guessed and during moments like these, when all four of our children were behaving and sending out positive emotions, his joy, happiness, and contentment would just ooze from his pores.

It had not taken us long to learn that Scryan was the least artistic of the children, but he had still enjoyed playing with paints like all children do. It was only the last few years or so that he began to become self-conscious about his work and had taken to cuddling during art time instead. I still tried to encourage him to try and he knew that Jasper and I loved his work just as much as that of the others, but art was growing old for him and he was content to watch me as I worked on a sketch of my own. And when he was not cuddling by my side, he would crawl into Jasper's lap.

Ashley was extremely creative, maybe even the most creative of the bunch, and she had an eye for artistic composition. Where the others looked to their talents for inspiration, Ashley looked to the world around her. We had many gorgeous still-life paintings and family sketches done by her hanging up around the house. My favorite was a giant oil painting of Scryan curled up in Jasper's lap, while Allison looked over his shoulder at her brother. That painting was the focal point of our living room.

Allison's artwork tended to center on her knowledge of astronomy or archeology or ecology. The paintings and sketches were all breathtaking, looking like the cover of many a sci-fi novel, and they always had a story behind them. My favorite were a series of sketches, done one after the other in a sketch pad, that showed the evolutionary transition from vertebrate to tetrapod, to mammal, to primate, to ape, to vampire. If I thumbed through the pages quickly, the images would flip past fast enough to look like a motion picture. Needless to say, there were hundreds of sketches in that book and it had taken her over a year to complete.

Jackson's sketches were based solely on his visions. If he did not scry it, he did not draw it. He had made me an entire sketchpad full of drawings of my human life. He had already told me all the main details, but until he drew it, I had never seen my mother or the vampire who changed me before. Jackson's sketches were helping Jasper with his issues with his past as well. Our son had spent years filling a sketchpad with pictures of Jasper's human past, because although he did not have amnesia, he could remember almost none of it.

It was just another typical day and these were just our usual five am activities that we were all engaged in, but then I paused in my sketch work and held Scryan close to me as a vision hit. It may have been five in the morning our time but it was noon already in Egypt and Amun had just discovered a human that he was sure had a talent. And this was not just any talent, but a shield. After seeing Bella's shield in action against the Volturi over nine hundred years ago, he wanted a shield of his own. And after all these years of keeping his eyes out for a shield, he had finally found one.

The human Amun had found was a young teenager named Sonja. She was from Cairo, where she lived with her parents and extended family. With the addition of Sonja, Amun's coven would comprise five vampires, with two of the five being talented. Numbers like that were not enough to cause trouble for a peace-loving coven, like our own, but they were more than enough to draw attention to Amun, with his past. He was already skating on thin ice with four and he knew it, which was why he was so nervous about witnessing for our family back when Renesmee was little.

Amun was the single oldest vampire any of us had ever met, because there were not many of us around that were well over five thousand years old. And although I had heard of a pair of nomads who were at least six thousand, they had not had the past history of clashes with the Volturi Amun had had. He was one of a handful of vampires still alive that lived before the Volturi came to power, back in a time when we were free to roam the Earth as Gods amongst our flock. It was hard conforming to the new rules when one had spent the majority of their existence without them.

Amun had been part of the Egyptian coven back when they interacted with the human pharaohs, demanding human sacrifice and temple construction in their honor. The evidence of their reign could still be seen in natural landmarks that had been preserved through the years. Amun even still occupied his ancient underground temple, although he had long ago been forced to abandon his main temple at Karnak. Karnak was a major tourist destination now and a place of exploration for archeologists, but Amun's smaller temple just outside of Thebes had long ago been buried in the sand and built over as Luxor expanded. His temple was currently located fifty meters underneath the major city, which was a prime location for any vampire.

Amun and his wife Kebi, who was originally known as Mut, had been the only two original members of the Egyptian coven to succumb to the Volturi and their new laws voluntarily. Thusly they were the only two to survive, which was why Egyptian religion tended to become more Amun-centric over time. But tensions with the Volturi continued to run high, despite the cessation of hostilities. Aro had only let Amun live as an example of his magnanimity to show the other vampires that all one had to do to survive was comply with the rules. And although Amun complied and never plotted against the ruling coven, his deepest desire was always to create a coven strong enough to stand against them.

Aro knew all of this and so kept a close eye on his friend to the south. He even went so far as to steal Demetri away from Amun, as Amun was Demetri's creator. And if Amun had disliked the Volturi before said theft, he had despised them after. He had even gone to great lengths to hide Benjamin from Aro, which was why Benjamin was already two hundred years old at the gathering in Forks, and yet no one had ever met or heard of him before.

Amun's past was one of the more popular bedtime stories to tell the children. Of course our children did not ever sleep or even own beds, but we still sat around in the evening telling stories. And with my Jackson's gift, those stories came to life like never before. I knew all of these details either because Jackson had seen them or because Edward had heard them. And frequently the children would ask me for an update, so I would look for Amun's future and enthrall them with tales of what our ally was up to.

Scryan too would look for Amun, although the humans surrounding him made him blurry. My son could not scry humans, so all of our allies who were located in the midst of human cities and surrounded by humans were blurry and would disappear from his view altogether if they interacted with humans. And since Sonja was a human, Scryan had missed this vision of Amun.

I was certain that adding Sonja was a mistake. Not only would she not be the type of shield Amun was looking for, but the new addition would mean even more vigilance in their effort to hide from the Volturi. Sonja was a shield, just as he had predicted, but she was not a mental shield like Bella, or even a physical shield like Renata. Sonja was an empathic shield. Sure she would be immune to Jasper, Ashley, Chelsea, and Corin, but what good would that do against Alec, Jane, and Demetri? None. Amun was potentially sacrificing his coven over a practically useless talent. And since Amun was already constantly on the back of Aro's mind, another vampire would surely call attention to the group. Five Egyptians were not likely to be tolerated, especially given his known desire for independence.

So all and all, adding Sonja was clearly a bad move on Amun's part. He had already chosen to abduct her from her home tonight, but was forced to wait for the sun to die down to act, so there would still be time to intervene. As soon as I came out of the vision, I put Scryan down and ran straight to Carlisle. I did not wait to explain what I had seen to my family or even bother to tell Jasper where I was going; I just left him with the four children and ran. Scryan would see what I would say and would tell them and they would follow behind me in a few minutes.

I called out Carlisle's name and my request for him to meet me in his office as soon as I was within his hearing range. He was already waiting for me when I arrived, so I quickly set about explaining to him what needed to happen as I wrote down some of the lines I had heard him speak. While I ran, I had been searching the future for how best to handle this conversation with Amun, so I knew several things that should be said and several more than should not.

Carlisle nodded in understanding and just asked one question as he picked up his phone and prepared to dial, "What's our story pertaining to why we're hiding?"

I had seen that this was the most important piece of information he would need to convince his friend to see things his way, so I had left it to last so I could impress upon my father figure its importance.

"Jackson. I was searching for my human relations when I found the boy. He's my great great nephew and he can see the past. He saw who killed Marcus' wife, which is dangerous information to possess, so the entire family's hiding. The secret would tear apart the Volturi and shake them to their core," I answered.

We had all been shocked when Jackson had first had the vision of Didyme's death. She was both Aro's sister and Marcus' mate, so who had killed her was one of the great mysteries of our world. And like all of the mysteries and legends of old, her death was subject to Jackson's prying eyes. Carlisle had told the children the story, Jackson became curious, and next thing we knew our family was sitting on top of a secret worthy of all our executions, because Aro had murdered his own sister.

"But if I tell Amun Aro did it, won't he be in danger for knowing?" Carlisle asked in response.

"You mustn't tell him who. Simply that we know and Aro knows, but Marcus doesn't. Now call before it's too late," I instructed, going over to the computer and plugging my earphones in so that I could listen in on the conversation. Not only did Allison have this place protected by a firewall, but all of our phone calls went through the internet. This allowed others on our side to listen in without being heard, as well as the redirection of the calls through other locales, throwing off any attempted trace.

He nodded again and pressed send on the phone, dialing Amun's private cell phone number. It only took one ring for him to pick up. "Carlisle? Is it really you?" Amun asked on the other end of the line.

"Yes it's me, old friend. Listen closely, because my daughter sees that you're about to make a terrible mistake," Carlisle replied.

"Where have you been? No one has heard from you in over eight hundred years! We thought your entire coven was destroyed without report of the incident!"

"We fled into hiding, which you'll have to do too if you go through with your plans to change Sonja. Her shield won't turn out to be valuable to you in the end, so you're doing yourself a disservice with this one, my friend."

"You're only saying that because you already have a shield. What's wrong with me wanting to protect my coven?"

"Nothing's wrong with that, but Sonja won't help you in that endeavor. She's an emphatic shield, not a mental or physical shield. She will only be useful against Chelsea and Corin. She'll be useless in a fight."

"Chelsea is the glue that holds the Volturi together," Amun replied.

"But her influence fades only slowly over time. Sonja would have to block her for years to cause dissolution of the Volturi. Do you really think that'd be tolerated or sustained for that length of time?" Carlisle countered.

"Probably not, but she is the most talented human I have come across in a thousand years. You wouldn't have me walk away from that, would you?"

"I would. Our family isn't prepared to jump to your aid right now if this turns ugly."

"After I risked my coven to provide witness on behalf of yours, this is how you repay the favor?"

"I greatly appreciate your sacrifice. We all do. But we can't come out of hiding right now," Carlisle insisted.

"And why not?"

"We found another talent. Someone much more useful than Sonja," he replied cryptically, not wanting to give his hand away all at once.

"Another one? Surely it's you, not me, who is plotting to over through Aro and his minions!"

"My daughter Alice found him. He was a distant human relation of hers and she couldn't bear to leave him."

"Alice, the psychic?" he gasped. "Don't tell me you found another fortune teller."

"No, this boy can't see the future. He sees the past. Have you any idea of what secrets are buried in the past Amun?"

"Many. But how can the past be used to usurp the Volturi?"

"The truth about the past will cause them to crumble from the inside. We know their secrets; all of their secrets, including the answer to the greatest mystery of all."

"Marcus' wife?"

"Yes, I know who did it."

"How will that help anything? Aro will just send his guard out after his sister's killer when he knows, if the killer is even still alive."

"Aro already knows. He's known all along and is hiding the truth from Marcus. And worst of all, the killer's still alive and in Aro's good graces."

"How could he ever forgive the murder of his own sister?"

"He's just that greedy for power. Not telling advances his goals, while revealing the truth would lead to Marcus' death in an all-out battle to the death for vengeance."

"Surely Aro and Caius would take his side and help him."

"I think not. But I've already said too much, because you're in danger just from knowing that Aro knows. Just think how quickly Aro would destroy my family if he knew we knew the name."

"I see your point. This is a sensitive subject indeed. But am I to wait and cower forever?"

"No, we won't hide forever. We'll come out of our shell when Alice sees that the time is right. The rest of the world must be ready for the change and you must build yourself a strong coven at just the opportune moment."

"That is what I'm trying to do now!"

"But it's too soon and Sonja isn't the talent you think she is. Alice told me that she sees greater skills in your coven; talents far greater than the members of my coven possess, but it's too far in the future for her to see. Many talents will come to you within a very short period of time, so that your coven will go from being four strong to twelve, within only two hundred years. But nothing until that time comes and that time won't come this millennia. You've waited almost six thousand years my friend, but if you wait just a little over a thousand more, you'll have more than you ever dreamed of."

"Your promise sounds false. How could I possibly grow my coven that quickly with talented vampires?" he asked skeptically, although I could already see his will to turn Sonja decrease.

"I don't know the details, because Alice can't see that far ahead with the clarity she sees the near future, but that's what she sees if only you wait to act," Carlisle warned.

"How do I know that you're not using the time to secretly grow your own coven? You already admitted to having yet another new recruit."

"We have no desire to rule. We only desire to live freely. Besides, my coven fractured years ago, didn't you hear?"

"I heard nothing but that you had gone crazy and your psychic ran away."

"The insanity was a ruse, but my daughter did leave with her mate. They came back with their new find and we went into hiding. But we had already started living separately as four closely allied pairs, because it seemed that was the only way to avoid Volturi scrutiny. And you know teenagers: once you give them an ounce of freedom, they never give it back. They all liked living on their own so much they haven't lived under my roof in hundreds of years."

"I really will be better off if I wait?" Amun asked, finally conceding, as the future shifted to one where Sonja would be allowed to remain human.

"Yes. I absolutely promise you that good things are coming your way. Alice sees them, so how could they not?"

"You may be right. I will wait, but make sure to keep in touch with me and let me know what I must do and where I must go to ensure the correct future."

"Will do. Farewell my friend, I'll be in touch," Carlisle said fondly.

And so their conversation ended and Amun stuck to his word, for the most part. I could still see him spending his days and nights watching that human, but I did not see him changing her.


	39. Chapter 37

Edward's POV:

A hundred years past and Ashley and Scryan's pranks were getting out of hand. The two of them were grounded at least ninety percent of the time, because as soon as Jasper paroled them, they would do something like this and catch another grounding. Emmett and I walked right into their trap, not even realizing the pranksters would be lying in wait outside their house. We were only stopping by on a Sunday to ask Jasper if he wanted to join us on a hunting trip tomorrow.

Emmett and I were making out, outside Jasper's house, with his hands on my waist and my hands fisted in his hair. It only lasted a second before Jasper came to our rescue and sent waves of calm to us.

"Uh-hmm," Jasper cleared his throat.

Like I said, Ashley was getting out of control. She would manipulate the emotions of those around her, sending out lust and desire to the adults. She had never experienced the emotions herself, but she had seen the same pattern repeated in the adults enough to pick it out for experimentation. And the first experiment had been so hilarious that she had apparently decided to try it again. Only this time it was Emmett and me that were her victims. With Scryan choosing the future where Ashley's manipulations were successful, Emmett and I were trapped.

I quickly removed my hands from Emmett's hair and eyed his hands on my waist speculatively.

"Sorry," Emmett mumbled as he took his hands off my waist, diverting his eyes.

"Ashley, Scryan, you two are grounded for a month. No snowboarding, no race cars, no cliff diving, no paintball, no hang-gliding, no hunting, got it?" Jasper asked, using his strict authoritarian voice and making the emotional climate serious, instead of lustful.

"Yes, Dad," they replied simultaneously.

"Good. Now go to your rooms and don't come out until school tomorrow." Scryan and Ashley turned and went inside their house with the taste of defeat palpable in the air. "Sorry about that. That was rather disgusting. I must say, I preferred Rosalie and Bella's kiss last month. Now that was _hot_."

I could see the incident in question playing through Jasper's mind. Bella was in Rosalie's arms with her tongue down her throat; Bella's hands in Rosalie's hair. Rosalie traced along Bella's jaw and then down her torso and then the waves of calm as Jasper broke up the party. Ashley and Scryan had been grounded for a month and they had just gotten off grounding two days ago.

Emmett and I did not know what to say. I decided to let him off the hook, because he was no guiltier than I. "We're cool, Emmett. Do you want to wrestle?" I asked, hoping to cheer him up.

"No, not right now. I don't feel up to it," he replied sullenly. Not only had he missed Bella and Rosalie's kiss last month, but now he had been forced to kiss me, which was disgusting.

"It'll be okay, Em," Jasper said, patting our brother on the back in a manly way. "What did you two come here for anyway? Surely you should've been expecting the ambush."

"We just came to see if you wanted to go hunting tomorrow after school. And no, we did not see that coming at all: Ashley and Scryan's thoughts were completely blank until it started," I replied.

"They're getting better at that. I've been teaching them to keep their mind's blank, but I didn't imagine that it would turn out so disgustingly. And here I was hoping that I could take Scryan and Ashley down to the racetrack later, but now I'll have to stay here to enforce their punishment," Jasper said.

Aiden, Carl, and Adriel had all begged Carlisle mercilessly for a car. They had heard Jackson's visions of the past when we all had cars and they wanted one too. At first Carlisle insisted that we do not have cars because we have no roads to drive them on. When we lived with the humans it was just part of the charade. And the children were still young, so it had been easy for Carlisle to tell his boys no.

Aiden, Carl, and Adriel were not deterred, but instead enlisted the help of Ashley and Scryan who made Carlisle _want_ to have drag races. Then they set out to convince Esme that _she_ wanted a racetrack. It took a hundred fifty years, but the bloodsuckers won and Carlisle and Esme built a racetrack and flew in car parts. And since they could not be harmed in a crash, we let the children drive, but we did make them build the cars themselves with Rosalie. They crashed the hot-rods about as fast as the class could build them, so we currently had just two.

"What about hunting tomorrow? Do you want to go?" Emmett asked, starting to come out of his funk.

"It sounds fun, but I can't: not with Scryan and Ashley being grounded again. Besides, I just went yesterday, because it was my first chance to go in over a month," Jasper replied. He had not gone hunting once while his children were grounded and had been drinking synthetic blood instead. 'I thought Alice knew something she wasn't telling me this morning, but I can't believe she let the children get away with that. She must think this is funny,' he continued in his thoughts.

"We will see you on Monday then. Come on, Em, let's go to the racetrack," I said, nudging Emmett along in front of me.

Jasper waved and went back inside his house and Emmett got the hint and started running to the racetrack. Emmett was still not quite his usual cheery self, but we made it to the track without any further incidents. Rosalie and Bella were supervising on the sidelines and Violet and Lily were racing while Rosita, Allison, Jackson, Eliza, Masen, Aiden, Carl, and Adriel watched. Now why could Scryan and Ashley not have decided to race cars with the rest of the nice kids? That would have made my afternoon far less disturbing.

Lily crossed the finish line first just as Emmett and I reached the gang. "So what are you kids up to?" I asked.

"We were just racing," Eliza explained. "Jackson beat Allison. Violet won against Adriel. Carl beat Aiden. And-" Here I cut Eliza off.

"Wait, Violet beat Adriel in a race? How did that happen?" I asked and then watched as Rosita showed me the event in her memory, because I could never see passed Eliza's shield.

It was true that Violet had won the race, but I was sure Adriel had not been using his skill to influence the outcome. He must really like her.

"Okay, so who's next?" Emmett asked, hoping he could get a turn.

"Actually, Violet and Lily were the last race of the day, the sun's setting already." The sun sets quite early this far north. "We aren't allowed to drive the cars in the dark or my dad will take them away," Aiden said. Since when do any of the leaches do what their parents tell them to? Oh right… this was Carlisle's son, of course he listens.

"We're gonna play Laser Obstacle Chess," Rosita added. It was like human Laser Obstacle Chess, just bigger. A large field was set up with lasers at a higher density than used in the human game and when someone lost, the laser hit their skin, scattering light in every direction, creating a spectacular light show.

"And I'm gonna tell the story of The Vampire and Shape-Shifter Wars," Jackson said.

"Righteous, Dudes!" Emmett exclaimed, because he could get excited about anything.

Masen won Laser Obstacle Chess because he was the most agile, and his mind-reading came in handy in knowing which chess moves his opponent was likely to make. Jackson came in second, because he looked to the past for the best chess games ever played and what strategies were used. His strategy was impeccable, especially because he kept not thinking about what his strategy was ahead of time, making it more difficult for Masen to read his mind.

Once the game was over, we cleaned up and everyone sat around the campfire. We had a pit installed only a hundred yards from the racetrack and even Bella and Rosalie, who had been performing maintenance on the cars at the track, joined us for Jackson's tale.

Everyone was quiet as Jackson spoke, "Long ago, long before the Eldritch Creature Wars, the shape-shifters and the vampires hated each other. It was similar to our mutual hatred with the werewolves, because we hated them and they hated us. We genocided their kind and vice versa.

"One night a vampiric army stole into a shape-shifter rookery. These shape-shifters were all giant eagles. We were silent as we approached, so they did not _hear_ us. We rolled in mud before we entered, so that they would not _smell_ us. And we had a very talented old vampire with us, who had the ability to make himself _invisible_ and he could project the invisibility onto those around him, so that they did not _see_ us," Jackson said.

The vampires Jackson saw predating The Great Eldritch Creature War were more talented than after said war and the reason behind this was two-fold. First, before the war many of the vampires had been purebloods, born of two vampire parents, so they were more talented than bitten vampires. Second, our history was lost in that war, so our kind was not even aware that extra talents were possible. Slowly, with the conversion of skilled humans, vampires relearned their lost knowledge of skills, but it was not until the Volturi that anyone thought to deliberately seek out skilled vampires and make an army out of them. That was why Aro had been so successful.

"He wasn't just too repulsive or to beautiful to look at, but genuinely transparent, allowing light to travel right through him without diffracting," Jackson continued. "This wasn't a mental allusion that could be thwarted by a shield like Aunt Bella. If a camera snapped a picture of him, he wouldn't show up on the film.

"So thirty mature invisible silent vampires tip-toed into the rookery and set fire to the place, ripping out the hearts of adult shape-shifters with their bare hands.

"It was only then that they realized they were being attacked, but it was too late, because there were so few left alive by that time and we were already upon them. We ripped out their throats before they could even shift into their bird form. But one old shifter was very paranoid and had been a shifter far longer than the others and survived many a vampiric attack. He was over ten thousand years old, which was very old for a shifter.

"He stayed in his bird form all the time, because he could no longer remember what his human form was like or why he would want to experience it. He was the only one who was already in bird form and he was the only one who escaped that night. He flew away into the night to warn the other shifters.

"And so the shape-shifters bit an army of humans, transforming them into an army of shape-shifters, all having the eagle form."

"When humans were bitten by full blood shape-shifters they took the form of the biter. Form shuffling only occurred during vertical reproduction," Allison clarified.

Jackson waited for Allison to finish and then continued right where he left off, "They knew of the old invisible vampire and they tracked his scent back to his invisible coven, keeping just out of sight. They kept watch for hours, days, and weeks. The shifters learned the coven's routine and when best to attack. The old warrior didn't use his invisibility within his own coven, so it was easy for the shifters to spy on him.

"The shifters flew in like the wind carrying the trunks of whole trees in their talons. These trees had been cut and dried days before in preparation for the battle. The great birds dropped the trunks in an encircling pattern with a loud bang thundering across the land and this alerted the coven and the old vampire immediately made everyone invisible, but the great trunks were lit on fire before they could escape.

"Just as the coven became aware of the dangerous fire encircling their camp, another flock of eagles flew in each carrying a great bale of hay. They tore the strings with their sharp talons, releasing the hay over the burning land. The entire coven was quickly engulfed with flames and the invisible vampires perished. Not a sole survived to warn the other covens of the danger.

"They came down on our nurseries and they had more freshly bitten humans than they were ever known to produce. They attacked en masse and in parallel. Every nursery in the country was attacked at the same time, so we had no chance to warn our friends and family of what was coming. They killed our eggs, our host, and our babies. They killed our young and our old. They slaughtered the lot and asked questions later.

"And so, that's how North America was cleared of vampires for a time. That's why the continent was considered shifter country and those who didn't wish to be torn apart and burned by shifters didn't venture that way; we stayed in Southern Europe and Asia instead.

"The other creatures and our own kind had already reached an agreement on how to split the globe. The elves occupied South America. The werewolves stayed in the Arctic and in Northern Europe and Asia. The hobbits held the pacific islands. The dwarves held Africa. The goblins guarded the Middle East. And the spirit warriors defended Australia. No one wanted Antarctica, because there were no humans there.

"We each kept to our respective sides of the globe and we didn't fight for a while. It was a kind of heavy truce, because no one wanted peace, but as long as we each stayed out of the other's way, there'd be less hardship all around," Jackson finished.

Alice arrived with Esme, to pick up their children for the night, with perfect timing. They were just gathering up discarded jackets and chatting with Bella, Rosalie, and Emmett, when Alice's vision hit. Eliza, Masen, and I watched with Alice as the vision unfolded, and I wondered if Scryan was seeing the same thing at home with Jasper and Ashley.

The Volturi had recently decided to pay Amun a visit. Normally Aro stayed behind in his turret and the accused would not have his thoughts read. But this time the Volturi were suspicious, because they had heard rumors that Amun had added four new members to his coven; he had not heeded our warning after all.

Amun had left Sonja human, but he had continued to watch her. She was one hundred twenty-three now, but with the long life expectancies humans were currently experiencing, she was still alive. And now that Amun had come across Khonsu, another talented human, he had decided to change them both. He still knew exactly where to find her and even that she would want her husband, Maurice, changed as well. And since he had already decided to build his coven up, he had no problems changing Maurice.

Amun was unable to resist changing Khonsu, because he had the ability to bestow confusion to the mind. Confusion could be used in defense in a fight or simply to distract an opponent long enough to run. Amun had found Khonsu while he was scoping out a victim for dinner, but that night he found something even better than dinner. By the time the vision hit Alice, Amun had already changed Khonsu and his wife, bringing their number to eight total, with four newborns.

Eight was a large coven, but it was not enough for a newborn army, although it had already gotten Amun in trouble with Aro. Benjamin, Sonja, and Khonsu were all talented, and so the Volturi felt threatened. Aro had ordered Amun be brought to Volterra and forced to touch Aro's hand. The Volturi guard was currently on their way to collect Amun and his touch would confirm that he had created four newborns, two of which were powerful, with the intentions of building up a coven of talented vampires so that he could stand against the Volturi. This would be punished immediately by death.

Aro would send a large scouting party out to retrieve, aka kill, the rest of the Egyptian coven and not even Khonsu's confusion could save them, especially because Khonsu was still a newborn and did not yet have control over his power. But, the Volturi would not find them in Egypt, because Amun had told Kebi that if he was ever taken to Volterra, she was to find the Cullens. The Egyptian coven would already be headed to Denali by the time Aro sent for them.

Aro would see this in Amun's mind. He would see that Amun had been communicating with us over the phone and email, although he did not currently know where in North America we were, but Amun thought the Denali coven would know. And even worse, he thought the Denali's might be privy to our secrets and that they too might know who killed Marcus' wife.

We had told Amun that we knew who had killed Didyme, but not that it was Aro. Aro now suspected that we knew, and although he was not certain that we really knew the entire story, our family had come to his attention. It would not be long before they realized that Alice, Jasper, Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, Rosalie, Bella, and I had all not been seen for over eight hundred years and that no one, not even the Denalis, knew where we are. The Volturi would then become even more suspicious.

They would know we had not died, because Aro himself would question the Denalis. We still kept in touch via email, Skype, and the telephone, so the Denali's knew we were still alive and soon Aro would ask Demetri to track us. He would be unsuccessful, thanks to Bella, making the Volturi that much more suspicious. All of our friends, family, and acquaintances around the world would be tracked down, questioned, and possibly eliminated.

We would be safe on our island, because the Volturi would never be able to track or trace us. The only place our scent could be picked up from was on the nearby island where we hunted walrus. We would cease all travel to Walrus Island, only hunting whales, and over time our smell would dissipate. By the time the Volturi finds Walrus Island our smell would be long gone and they would never find us. And, even if they did pick up our scent, they would not pick up the scent of our children, because the children had never left the island, not once.

And when the Volturi cannot find us, what will happen? They will know we are using Bella to hide, that we are purposely hiding from them, and that we have been doing so for hundreds of years. They will assume the worst and think that we are building up an army to overthrow the Volturi. And they will react to this by eliminating all of our potential allies. I knew Aro's mind well enough to know that he would not rest until we were no longer a threat.

So we would be safe, but at what cost? We could not allow our friends to die. Our family. My Nessie. No! We had to act quickly. We have to contact all of our friends and family and move them to our island.

Eliza, Masen, and I were horror struck watching the vision along with Alice. Allison took Masen's hand, wondering what was wrong. Jackson, Lily, Rosita, Carl, Violet, Adriel, and Emmett just looked on in confusion.

"What's going on?" Emmett asked finally breaking the silence. I could see in his mind how odd we all looked, because one second Alice was talking to Rosalie about the new winter coats she was having made and the next Alice, Masen, Eliza, and I were all keeled over.

"The Volturi," Alice answered.

Everyone was silent. The kids had all been told the stories of the Volturi and Jackson even liked to look for their past battles in his visions. He often told of the Vampire Wars of the South and how the Volturi cleaned house and before that, of the destruction of both the Romanian and Egyptian Covens.

When no one spoke, I added, "The Volturi are going to eliminate the Egyptian coven, then the Denali coven, and then everyone else we know, looking for us."

"We must tell Carlisle," Esme said, letting go of the death grip she had on Carl and Adriel, who just happened to be closest to her. She did not want to let them go, but she had enough of her wits about her to know that she needed to release them in order to run.


	40. Chapter 38

Jasper's POV:

And so we contacted all of our allies, including everyone who had stood witness for us in the last fight. We called Eleazar and the Denali coven. We called Renesmee and her hybrid coven in La Push. We called Siobhan and the Irish coven. We called Zafrina and the Amazonian coven. We even called the Romanian coven. Then, we set about calling nomads. We called Peter and Charlotte, Randall, Mary, Charles and Makenna, and even Alistair.

Then we started calling our new allies, who we had either not met back then, or we had met but had refused to come, because we were not yet allied with them. There were three runaways from Victoria's army, Shelly, Steve, and Fred, who we had barely known back then, but agreed to come now. They were not a coven, but a mated pair and a solitary male who traveled separately. And there was a new coven in England the last time Carlisle had visited, while looking for Alistair. They were just two brothers then, but they had a newborn female now, so that made three.

But not everyone we called came, just like not everyone came last time. Once again the Nigerian and Kenyan covens decided not to come, even though Rosalie and Emmett had spent a lot of time with them in Africa. Alice's friends Barbara and Michael refused to come, even though they had traveled together for a long time before she found me. And some of our friends were no longer living this cursed second life of ours, so we did not even bother to contact them. Vithoon and Kavi from Thailand were gone, as was my creator, Maria, and all of my old contacts from the Southern Wars.

We told everyone we could reach to drop everything and come at once. We told them which way to come, but not where we were. We arranged to meet them each at a separate location, far from our island, so that if one party were picked off, the others would not fall. We called the helicopter company and said it was an emergency, because we needed as many helicopters as possible, and quickly.

We arranged for the first helicopter to retrieve Renesmee and the others from La Push. Only Jacob's pack and their spouses would come, because the other wolves were needed to stay and protect the tribe, but my niece was safe on our island in just under six hours' time. We helicoptered the Denali coven in as well. They left a note for the Egyptians to call us, and we would come get them too, _if_ they made it to Alaska before the Volturi Guard, that was. Alice tried to locate them to intercept them before they reached Alaska, but with the Volturi right on their heels, it was too risky to send a vampire and the humans just would not do.

We had helicopters waiting at the disclosed locations for the Amazonians, the Romanians, the English, the Irish, with Benjamin and Tia, and the nomads. In a happy turn of events, Benjamin and Tia had broken off from the other five Egyptians, deciding to go north instead, to warn the Irish, on their way to Alaska. They reached Siobhan only hours before the Irish set out for our rendezvous location and they all made it safely to our island.

Alice's vision of Amun's fate had occurred late at night and before sunrise the first helicopters full of our friends had arrived. Bella and Edward greeted the first helicopter, which contained Renesmee and the other hybrids. Carlisle greeted the Irish and English, Esme the Romanians, Rosalie the Denali's, and Alice the Amazonians.

And all the while, Emmett and I stayed watching the children. They had been out at the fire pit telling stories when the vision hit, while I was at home enforcing Ashley and Scryan's latest punishment. The family all rushed to the main house to tell Carlisle and had taken the children with them. But within half an hour, we had organized and everyone had left Emmett and me with the children in the old nursery room. And Scryan and Ashley had been let off of their grounding, because I no longer had time to enforce it. I still thought about it in that part of my brain reserved for enforcing minor punishments on the children, but it was no longer on the forefront of my mind or one of my top concerns.

As the night wore into morning, our family members returned for their children, finally freeing Emmett and me to meet with our guests. Edward was just picking up Eliza and Masen, as Alice arrived with the good news.

"Peter and Charlotte are on the next helicopter. You should meet them, Jazz," Alice told me as she looked over Allison's shoulder. Our daughter had been on her laptop computer working on our defenses all night.

"But I can't leave you with all of the kids," I answered as Emmett left with his three daughters. They were the last to go, because Carlisle had already come for his children.

"You can take Ashley and Scryan with you. I'll set up the projector and make a slide show full of pictures of the kids for our guests. Jackson can help me and I'll try to convince Allison to take a break," Alice replied, reaching over and closing the screen of the laptop. Sometimes my daughter could go a bit overboard with that thing.

"We can explain about the eggs all at once," Scryan added, probably trying to sound helpful so I would not find time to finish his grounding.

I was excited to see Peter and Charlotte again, after all of these years, so I smiled before pulling Alice into my arms and giving her a quick peck on the cheek. Allison took advantage of the momentary parental distraction by opening her computer back up and going right back to work.

"We already gave everyone the gist of what was going on, but a slide show of the process will help. Peter and Charlotte are on a helicopter with several other nomads from North America. The entire group will be staying with us, so their helicopter will land just east of our house," Alice informed me, before directing her attention at Allison. "Save your work and take a break. You have exactly one hundred twenty seconds before I pull the plug."

"Mom, this is important!" Allison whined, but clicked save anyway.

"They're all going to stay with us?" I asked confused.

"There's nowhere else to put them. The hybrids actually need to sleep, so they're getting Edward's house and the guest house. Rosalie and Emmett are taking the Denali's and both the Irish and English are staying here with Esme and Carlisle. The Amazonians will be across the way at the school house and we'll take the nomads," Alice answered.

"And the Romanians?" I asked.

"The school house officially, but they said they'd stay outside and keep to themselves if we don't have room for them. They'll all end up out in the tundra most of the time anyway."

"At least most of our guests don't need to sleep," I mused, as Allison finally shut down her computer.

Alice nodded and after that, we each took two children and went off on our respective ways. Ashley was the trouble maker, so I was in the habit of taking her with me instead of Allison, to make life easier on my wife. And Scryan was my baby, so I always took him with me either way.

Twenty minutes later I was standing on the edge of the clearing, holding Ashley's hand with Scryan standing behind me, as a helicopter descended. I quickly recognized Charles and Makenna in the front and I spotted Peter and Charlotte in the back, but it took me a moment to realize that the three nomads in the middle must be Fred, Shelly, and Steve, although I could not place the eighth nomad in the bunch. I had not met the three refugees from Victoria's army, but Rosalie and Emmett had, and three of the four met their description. But there had only been three of them and my only clue to the mystery vampire's identity was that she had a romantic attachment to the tall blond.

"Immortal children?" Peter whispered through the roar of the helicopter blades, but I still heard him. His fear peaked and set off a chain of fear and nervousness from the other passengers, which in turn set Ashley off. I tried to calm everyone and sooth my daughter, but still, I could tell it was taking all of her will power to stay put for this meeting.

"How could you, Jasper?" Charlotte asked appalled, also in a barely audible whisper.

"Evening, Mr. Whitlock," Lenard, the helicopter pilot greeted me as he switched the blades off.

"Evening, Lenard, good to see you again. Thank you for bringing our friends on such short notice," I said before handing over a large tip; larger than usual.

"No problem. I see that giant you call a baby is trying to hide behind you again; doesn't he know he's too tall for any of that by now?" Lenard asked as the nomads quickly disembarked.

Peter led the way, holding Charlotte's hand, as he moved to stand as far away from me and my children as possible given the limited size of the clearing. I did not need my gift to know that the entire group was wary of us and I could read it in their body language, because they were staying low to the ground, in a defensive stance. They must all believe my children to be immortal children, but their distance was to my advantage, because it kept them and their emotions away from Ashley.

"But he is my baby: he's the youngest by half an hour," I replied, pulling Scryan's hand from behind me and flipping him into my arms like a baby. I was using him in an attempt to disguise the fact that Ashley was in distress and also trying to hide behind me. I was only so big and could only hide so many children, so it was better the human paid attention to the more normal behaving of the two.

"Dad!" Scryan complained half-heartedly. He loved to cuddle and with his visions, he would have moved if he had really not wanted me to hold him. Well, there was a possibility that the human pilot was interfering with his visions, because he could not see humans, but I thought he was just embarrassed to be cuddling with his dad in front of all of the strangers.

"I'd never have believed that child was only nine if you hadn't told me last time I was here dropping off a shipment. And to think, he's twins with that tiny little thing?" Lenard asked, making small talk as he made his preparations for the return trip. We commonly let the humans think the children were twins in order to explain why we had two of the same age.

"The little one takes after the wife," I replied, setting Scryan down and he quickly scurried behind me again, because he was shy and also because he felt Ashley's anguish and wanted to be close to her to protect his sister.

"You can say that again. I thought she was your wife the first time you brought her out, except with longer hair. I didn't even notice the height difference."

"Yes, but Ashley's catching up. I'm sure she's going to be taller than Alice when she grows up. Scryan has been taller for a long time now."

"That must've been some sight to see: that midget of a wife of yours trying to carry that giant of a baby," he joked.

"It still is; he's been picking her up for a while now."

"Dad!" Scryan complained again.

"Well, it was nice talking to you," Lenard said as he made his final preparations, before nodding and turning the blades back on.

As soon as the human and his helicopter were gone, Charlotte stepped forward and asked, "What's going on, Jasper?" All of the nomads nodded their heads, indicating that they also wanted an answer to this question and they did not want to wait for the customary greetings to get it. They were not just curious, they were livid that we had gotten them into this.

"As you can probably guess, our family has angered the Volturi. They don't know about the children, but we refuse to submit ourselves for examination and let them find out. Though, these children are _not_ immortal children and we haven't broken any laws, we just don't want to risk it," I answered.

"These are no hybrids," Peter replied tersely.

"No, they aren't. But they are my biological children. Just look at how much they look like Alice and me and you'll see the truth in that statement," I answered, releasing calm into the atmosphere.

"How can this be, brother?" Peter asked me, finally stepping forward to hug me. As he approached, Scryan grabbed Ashley's hand and pulled her back, into the tree line and away from the approaching stranger. He did so just in time too, judging by the emotions Ashley was emitting.

"Long story short, Alice and I discovered that vampires can reproduce and we have four children now. They grow, but only very slowly: Ashley and Scryan turned eight hundred a few years ago," I revealed.

"He can't be telling the truth," Makenna whispered to Charles, but we could all still hear her.

"But just look at those children! They're exact replicas of Alice and Jasper," Charles whispered back.

"Congratulations!" Charlotte replied with trepidation, joining Peter at my side and hugging me, but her heart was not in it.

Charlotte's supposed support was enough to convince Charles and Makenna, who closed the gap and shook my hand. After that, Fred, Shelly, and Steve introduced themselves and agreed to stay with us on the island, for the time being, although they were still undecided as to whether they would stand and fight with us if it came down to that. And I finally learned the identity of the extra nomad: she was Fred's mate Macy.

At this point Scryan and Ashley, who had remained hiding in the woods, suddenly took off in the direction of the main house. Scryan must have seen that we were about to leave, so I used his departure as a signal to get everyone moving. "We best follow the children, because Alice will be waiting," I announced before taking off after my youngest two.

My group and I were the last to arrive at the gathering in the clearing outside the main house and our various guests were curiously examining the other children. Alice had outdone herself again and the place was not just set up with the minimal requirements, such as a projector, screen, and laptop, but her decorative lights adorned the darkening clearing along with all of her other party decorations. She probably would have put out unnecessary chairs, if we had had any, but chairs were still considered a convenient and harmless weapon.

Scryan was just stopping next to Jackson, while Ashley was already on Alice's back when we entered the clearing. Allison was nearby, but her back was turned and she had her laptop out again. I joined my children at my wife's side as the others found room in the crowd. "This started with you and Allison, so you should do it," Alice whispered into my ear. "There are too many vampires here: I need to take Ashley away."

I nodded and stepped into the center of the clearing, just as Alice took off with Ashley. Scryan did not seem to like being left, judging by the look on his face and the nervousness he was putting out, but then Jackson put his arms out in offering and let his larger brother climb into them. Jackson may not be the tallest brother, but he was the oldest brother and it really showed in moments like these when he took care of his younger siblings.

"This all started in the year two thousand forty-eight, when I disgorged my first gall stone," I began.

As I spoke, Allison displayed pictures and video clips to confirm our story. I could feel the skepticism at first, but when we showed the pictures of Zakaira and Zikare, the first hosts, swollen with the parasitisms, the vibe from the audience began to shift. They were disbelieving and then curious. And when we showed the video clips of an actual hatching, even the Romanians became believers.

After I finished, my entire family, sans Ashley and Alice, joined me in the middle of the impromptu stage and Carlisle began his plea for their support. There really was no question that our extended family and friends would stand behind us in our hour of need: they all knew that the Volturi would kill them just for being lenient towards us. Being our friends was a guaranteed death sentence given that we were about to stand up to the ruling family, but there was a question as to just how many of the vampires present considered themselves our friends and family, when it was their second lives they were putting up.

Of course the Denalis were the first to step forward and acknowledge their support and willingness to fight for us, but Renesmee and the hybrids quickly followed and Peter, dragging a reluctant Charlotte, followed after. And once the dam was breached, the Amazonians, English, and Irish followed suit, while the Romanians continued to profess that they did not care what we had done as long as we were standing against their ancient enemy. And then most of the nomads pledged their support as well.

In the end, it was only Alistair who refused to pledge his loyalty. I had not been present the previous time when he had fled from Forks, so I did not know why he had abandoned us. It seemed clear that whatever his issue was then, was still an issue for him now. I was wary of his presence, but he seemed to at least be willing to lie low on the island and not flee and as long as he was willing to stay put, I did not see too much of a problem with his cowardice.

After that we entertained questions from our guests and explained just why we were unwilling to submit ourselves to Aro's gift. We even told them about Aro's murder of his sister and all of the other indiscretions ever committed by the Volturi, because we wanted to let the world know of their corruption, in case something happened to us. But finally the questioning wore out and we broke the guests into groups and went home. The eight nomads I had greeted, along with two other nomads, Randall and Mary, went home with us, meaning that we had an extra ten people to accommodate in our five bedroom house.

I had all of the children move into the master bedroom with me and Alice and I split the four small rooms between our guests. Nomads are not accustomed to much, so they mostly just needed a place to keep their things and a place to bathe every now and then. But Alistair did not need even that, because he took off into the wilderness, not even bothering to follow one of the families home.

I would have thought that our guests would get their assigned quarters and take off to enjoy the beautiful night outdoors. There was a mostly full moon out bright in the clear sky and these were people accustomed to being out in the wild. But, unfortunately for Ashley, they all wanted to gather in the living and dining rooms and ask me more questions. I thought that the group was never going to calm down and that my wife and daughter were never going to get a chance to return and that Scryan was never going to come down from his perch above my head on the ceiling, where he had me covered from above, in case the nomads got out of control. Allison and Jackson were also in defensive positions, covering my back. All of that fight training must have been paying off, although our guests were curious, not hostile, so the children may have over-reacted a tad. But better safe than sorry, so I was very proud of them for remembering their fight training when they felt threatened.

I spent two hours trapped in my living room answering questions for strangers when all I wanted to do was sit down with my brother and catch up on old times. I was just about to give up when Scryan jumped down from the ceiling and into my arms. My arms had not been waiting for this move, but I saw him in plenty of time so I caught him easily.

"Mom'll switch with you now. You and Peter can take Ashley out to the northern side of the island and have your chat. Jackson, Allison, and I'll stay here and guard Mom. We'll keep her safe, Dad," Scryan said before extricating himself from my arms and standing up straight.

"Is it safe to leave all of these people in the house without supervision?" Allison asked, grabbing her laptop. She did not consider her laptop safe. "I have electronics here that they could use to double-cross us."

"The only one you have to worry about double-crossing us is Alistair, and he's not even staying in our house. Besides, Charlotte is my sister-in-law and she'll be staying, so she can watch the house and all of the vampires that that entails," I replied.

Allison agreed and she was out the door, laptop in hand, with Scryan and Jackson before I could even instruct Charlotte not to let anyone touch anything that belonged to the children. "Thanks Char, I really owe you one," I said, ushering Peter out of the house with me, before he could insist upon another farewell kiss. They may have been mated for over a millennium, but they were still as sappy as teenagers.

We met up with Alice on the top of the eastern cliff that overlooked the ocean. We were a bit closer to the edge than I would advise, but the cliff was seventy-five feet of pure precipice jutting straight out of the ocean and so our scent was unlikely to travel down and betray our whereabouts.

"I just wanted to show Peter the view," Alice said handing Ashley over and giving me a hug. "We've only been out here for the past minute, I promise."

I kissed Alice quickly on the nose, before sending her off with Allison, Jackson, and Scryan, which left Peter, Ashley, and me. Finally I would have some brother bonding time and although we were not alone, this was probably the closest to the concept we were capable of achieving. Truly private conversations were reserved for those who did not have children. But then that is one of the joys of fatherhood: I never have to be alone again. I will always have someone who wants to play or wrestle or read or tell stories.

We spent the first few minutes walking to a safer part of the island with a significantly worse view and all the while we walked, I calmed Ashley and urged her to acclimate to my brother, her uncle, because I really wanted to join these two sides of my life: my old family with my new.

In the end, Peter was the first to speak. "Brother, I'm so happy for you, but never in a million years would I have pictured you with four children. Was that a bit of a shock when you found out?"

"I was surprised, but I knew immediately that I wanted my baby. There was never any question in my mind about that. I was concerned about her safety and the logistics, but mostly I was through the moon with excitement and happiness. For the first time in my life, my entire millennium plus of life now, I feel complete and content. I have everything I've ever wanted, but for one thing," I replied.

"What's that?"

"My brother to be here to share in it all with me. You saved me more than once, Peter, and I've saved you a few, so what do you say? Will you be an uncle to my children?"

"Well I was best man at your wedding and I'm your only living brother," Peter began as if he was trying to stall, but I could tell he was excited and happy. "So I guess I have to."

"Great!" I exclaimed taking Peter into a great big man hug, but without the back slapping, because that was were Ashley had retreated to.

"Okay, I get why you had one child, but why four? Peter asked curiously once the hug broke apart.

"Well you know they come in pairs, right?" I thought we had covered this in the presentation, but he did not seem to have grasped this concept yet.

"One from you and one from Alice?" I nodded. "So that makes two. Why four? Surely you must be crazy to want four _vampire_ babies!"

"That's what Alice thought once she figured out what she was getting herself into. I wanted to conceive again before the first two emerged."

"But why brother? Why would you make a second two when your first two weren't even born?"

"That's a difficult question. It was a feeling I had deep in my gut that told me that I wanted more children. At first I kept thinking that it had to do with the fact that I hadn't been given the choice with the first two. They weren't planned, they just happened. And I wanted to make babies again knowing that that was what I was doing. It was if by having the second two I was saying that I would've had the first two, even if I'd been given a choice. Not all of us would," I said thinking about Edward and Bella. They had three children and all three of them were accidents. If they had to do it all over again, I highly doubted that they would have three children now.

"And now?" he asked as Ashley jumped off of my back.

"And now I think it has to do with hormones. Our bodies are programmed to crave children, because it's evolutionarily advantageous for our species."

Peter nodded and we stood in silent thought for a few minutes. The silence was broken only by the howl of the artic foxes from the west and the song of a pod of whales in the icy ocean waters to the east. And then it was broken by the slapping of my hands against Ashley's, because she had held her hands palm-up and we had started playing that children's game where you pat your hands together and then clap. Normally the children sang an old vampire nursery rhyme when they played, but this time our mouths were silent, because we were exchanging emotions back and forth.

Slap, slap, slap, it will be okay, clap, stay calm, Peter is part of the family. Slap, slap, slap, you can do this, clap, you are doing great so far. And in return, a burst of nervousness, anxiety, and apprehension, on top of a background of love, support, and caring. I never thought anyone would call me loving, supportive, and caring, but that was my name now and I responded to it just as readily as I did to Jasper or Major. In fact, the only other name that could garner my attention as quickly was Dad.

"So can I ask you something?" Peter asked trepidly, breaking the silence.

"After all that we've been through together, you can ask me anything, brother."

"Was it hard to resist the blood of the hosts?"

"No. I thought that it would be, but they smelled off, so I was fine. You'll be fine too."

"Me? What about me?"

"I see the looks you give me when I have one of the children in my arms. I felt the desire and longing radiate from you when we showed the slide of the hatching. I know you want children too." He was at that very moment emitting wonder and jealousy, but I did not mention it.

"I tried not to think about it before, because well, what could I do about it? Nothing. But now, I see you so happy with your perfect family and I want that for me and Char."

"But?"

"But will she want the same thing? I took her aside earlier, while you were showing the others to their rooms, and I tried to get a feeling for how she feels about the kids. This is all so new that I don't want to throw my desire on her, but then I keep thinking about it and wanting to know," he replied, standing a little too straight.

Ashley winced at Peter's emotions, but did not flee; instead she grabbed my hands on a slap beat and held on. "If you try to work on your stoicism, I'd be willing to pass along how Char was feeling. But you really need to work on reigning in those feelings of yours, because they're painful for Ashley," I said.

"I haven't had to control my emotions in years: not since the last time we visited," Peter said, pulling in his fear and uncertainty. "How's this niece of mine?" Ashley nodded and let go of my hands to resume our game. "Okay, brother, now tell me."

"I'm sure she'll tell you just as soon as she gets you alone to talk. She doesn't like this whole situation with the Volturi after us and being stuck on this island with no one to eat. But, the one glimmer of hope I got from her today was when she was watching my children. There was even a nugget of maternal instincts in there." There had been a moment when I had thought she might try to grab Scryan up in a hug, but then the moment passed without me having to intervene on behalf of my scared son.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Is there any chance you two already have eggs on the way?" I asked.

"Well we don't know how to prevent them from coming, but we just threw out a set five years ago. If we search for them and find them, is there any possibility…"

"No, I'm so sorry. I can only imagine what it'd be like to lose an egg…" I think I would be devastated, suicidal even, but I kept my emotions in, for Ashley.

"Why didn't you tell us sooner? You've known for a thousand years and yet you've been letting your nieces and nephews die all of this time," he accused me, letting off a spark of anger that sent Ashley running into the pine tree forest. The forest was stunted and sparse from the cold, but global warming meant that there were plenty of trees for Ashley to hide in, even if I could still feel where she was the whole time.

"I couldn't: it would've put your life at risk to tell you. I was always planning on telling you someday, but if you knew, then you'd have to be isolated on our island like the rest of us. There are no humans here and sometimes I wonder if we're keeping the world out, or if the world is keeping us in, trapped inside this prison island."

"I forgive you. And I'll try not to think about that, so that I can remain calm for your little girl. Call her back, I'll be good this time, I promise," Peter vowed.

Ashley came back and stood by my side as Peter and I finished catching up. Not much had changed in his life, up until we called, but Peter filled me in on all of it, just like brothers do after a long time apart. And then when we were all talked out, we went back to our house and Ashley sat on my lap, with Alice standing behind us, while we fielded question after question from the nomads. Ashley was doing better with the emotions and Alice had clearly instructed our guests in the art of holding their feelings in.


	41. Chapter 39

Carlisle's POV:

Aro was all that I could think about from the moment Alice informed me that we were in danger and that Amun was as good as dead. My old friend Amun was doomed and I should have been saddened by his death. I think I will be saddened and grieve for him someday, but right now I was too busy concentrating on Aro to morn Amun and part of me felt that he had brought it upon himself anyway. The bigger part of me felt guilty for feeling that way and not having time to grieve for my friend.

Time was a limited commodity now, thanks to Amun's poor choices and I had to put the safety of my family and other friends first. I had to arrange for helicopters to pick everyone up and ferry them safely to the island before the Volturi could get to them. Alice did most of the work in planning it, but she still needed me and the others to call helicopter companies and make the arrangements.

And once our friends and family were here, they had to be greeted. Sure vampires could fend for themselves and find their way from the helicopter landing sites to the main house on their own, but we had to meet the humans who were delivering them for two reasons. First, we did not want the humans to come and go without being watched or to even think that they were not being watched, for all our safety. If the humans thought that they had free reign to show up whenever they pleased, they might see more than they should and expose our true nature, which was particularly a problem given that the children were not used to hiding. Secondly, the humans needed to be tipped for coming on such short notice. We arranged to pay the parent company extra, but that money never made it to the actual pilots and we wanted to show our appreciation, so that in the event of another emergency, the humans would be just as quick to drop everything and help us.

It was just one thing after the other that day and as soon as the human pilots were off, we had an island full of vampires and a lot of explaining to do. I managed to get through my plea for support after Jasper's speech and I was elated when almost everyone agreed to stand by us in our time of need. Alistair was the only one who refused to join us on the battlefield and I knew that was only because he was a pacifist and could not stand to fight. Pacifism was one of the many things he and I had in common and I too hated the idea of war with the Volturi.

After the formal presentation Esme, the boys, and I were responsible for seeing that our guests settled in and found a place to keep their most precious belongings. No one had been allowed to bring more than a bag, because of the weight limit of the helicopter, but each and every one of those bags contained items that the owners considered priceless and worthy of guarding with their lives; otherwise the items would not have been brought with them in the first place.

Our house was the biggest and we were right across from the school house, so that meant we had the majority of guests to accommodate. We put the English in our basement, gave the Irish our second floor, and Alistair's things were secretly stashed in our attic. There were originally only three Irish, which would not justify an entire floor to themselves, but Benjamin and Tia had temporally adopted the coven. That and Esme still needed her office on the second floor, because she had a lot of new construction to plan, so there really was not room for more than five vampires.

All eight of the Amazonians were crammed into to the two-roomed school house, but at least they were huge rooms. The Romanians were also supposed to be in the school house with the Amazonians, but they took off into the tundra after stashing their belongings. Their jewels were in the sporting-equipment closet and their one back-up set of clothing each were in Emmett's desk; I could only hope that Alice would never find out that they only owned four sets of clothing between the two of them.

It took half of the night, but we eventually got the housing arrangements figured out, though Esme did abandon all hope of following our normal routine at about one am when she realized the questions were not going to stop. In fact, instead of stopping the questions increased when the Denalis showed up after Emmett and Rosalie kicked them out, because they were disrupting their routine. At least the Denalis had established a place to leave their belongings.

With the majority of our friends on our door-step, Esme and I decided to take the party down to the first floor living room. The old nursery room and the small kitchen were on the same floor, so we opened up the doors in between and used the rooms as flow-over rooms for our guests. I kept expecting the nomads to show up next, but Scryan and Alice must have seen that our house could not handle another vampire or it would burst, and so the nomads stayed put at the Whitlock house.

And with twenty-two guests crammed into my house, I finally managed to slip away. Never would I have thought that I would be one of those husbands who have a house full of company and ducks out, leaving the wife and kids to entertain the guests, but I just could not stop thinking about Aro long enough to hold a conversation. Sure I answered direct questions when asked, but I was no good to anyone like this and so I left.

Aro was my friend; how could he want me dead? Surely this must be a simple misunderstanding. There must be a way to clear this whole mess up, if only I could speak to him and assure him that my family was not a threat and that we truly meant no harm. And from the time I found out about Alice's vision to when I ran out into the tundra, this was all I could think about. Just these few thoughts kept playing in a loop in my head, over and over again.

I ran straight into Alice and Ashley, who came out of nowhere, but were just standing there over-looking the ice-field as if they had been there for eternity. It was the dead of winter, so the rocky shelf that extended out into the sea on the northern side of the island was solid ice, except for the occasional seal-hole. They were stopped in back of a seal-hole, facing the direction I had come from, their golden eyes shining brightly in the pitch-black night. I would have thought they were out there hunting if I did not know of Ashley's distaste for killing all creatures.

"I have to call Aro," I said, coming to a stop in front of the seal-hole, across from them.

"I know," Alice said. "We're not here to stop you."

"Will it make a difference?" I asked hopefully. If they were not here to stop me, then they must be here to help me, meaning my call had a chance of succeeding. I would be able to get through to Aro.

"No, Aro has already made up his mind about us, so there's no chance," Alice replied gravely.

My hope started floating away from me and I desperately tried to hold on to it. "There must be, why else would you have come?"

"We came to tell you that it'll be okay. You don't need to beat yourself up over your every word when the call's over and it ends badly. There's nothing you can do, because our fate is already sealed."

"It ends badly? Then I shouldn't call."

"No, you have to call. You won't be able to live with yourself if you don't try."

"If I don't fail, you mean," I said with more disappointment as my hope left me. And then a question occurred to me. "What will Jasper say? Surely he'd know of another option we might try." I was grasping at straws, I knew, because Jasper was not one for optimism or peaceful solutions. But if there were a strategy we could try, he would know what it was.

"He'll say, 'If we were physically in their presence Ashley and I could manipulate their emotions to favor peace and Aiden could will the peace into existence with Scryan's help. But, we are not and our powers can't work over this distance. We can't allow them to get close enough for our powers to become effective,'" Alice said.

"And the phone call? I must call and fail?"

"Yes, if you don't fail now you'll be miserable forever thinking, 'What if.' Call him and see what if," Alice said, before adding, "We have to get back to Jasper now, because he's watching the nomads." And then Alice and Ashley were gone, racing over the ice so fast that they were just two blurs in the distance.

The Volturi were always behind the times, but had long ago installed a telephone system and acquired a human receptionist. Every coven leader in the world had the number in order to report back to Volterra, because basically it was so that we could inform on one another. The calls were screened first by the human and then by a member of the Guard, so rarely did a call make it through to Aro.

I called Aro, to beg my old friend to believe that we meant no harm. My call was put through with minimal delay and it seemed he wanted to speak with me very much. "Hello, Aro? It's me, Carlisle."

"Carlisle, my old friend! To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?" Aro asked.

"My daughter had a vision of your Guard. How's my old friend Amun?"

"Alas, he was building up a skilled coven in the hopes of over-throwing me."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I wish he had more sense than to try that. The last thing we need is political turmoil. I wouldn't like Amun for a leader."

"Wouldn't you though? Were you not in league with Amun?"

"I was not. I haven't seen him in a thousand years; I had no idea. What happened to him, might I ask?"

"Ah, the usual: a pile of ash."

"And the others?" I asked, still hoping that he and his Guard had not gotten to the other Egyptians yet.

"The same, except two got away."

"Really?" I asked, hoping that we might be able to save these two.

"Yes. Benjamin and Tia were not with the others and Demetri cannot track them. I assumed they were with you."

"Oh," I replied dejectedly. The only two that had survived were the two we already knew about. "Yes, Benjamin and Tia are here. I was hoping you meant another two."

"No. We would have gotten Benjamin and Tia, but Demetri was already heading to Alaska when he realized two were missing from the group. He's in Ireland looking for them now, but he called and told me that they had fallen off of his radar."

"I'm sadden such a thing has occurred. Let me assure you, Aro, that my coven was not involved, even though we've allowed Benjamin and Tia sanctuary among us."

"Then why have you been hiding?"

"We've added a new coven member; a biological offspring of my other son," I said making the lies up as I went along and thinking about Ashley, who had just left with her mother. I left out the details, so that Aro would assume she was another vampire hybrid.

"Ah, another hybrid? How is it they come so easily to you? I have tried a little experimenting of my own and the human never bore me a child."

"You know it has to be a female human?"

"Yes. I may be old, but I can still tell the difference."

"And she has to survive?"

"Yes."

"Not every vampire is so fertile, I fear it may have to do with age. Have you tried looking under the microscope to see if you're still making sperm? We have one here and not all of the men have sperm when we look."

"I did once and Alec was the only one of us who had any. I tried to encourage him to mate with a human, but the poor thing was so young when he was changed that he has never even mated with his own kind. Then I tried artificial insemination using Alec's material. It took several tries, but we did get one hybrid after several months of hard work."

"How wonderful! Congratulations on becoming a grandfather! There's nothing more precious than a new life. What's his name?"

"Aleczandria, but we call her Leczy. She was an adorable baby, but I was hoping that the child would have a talent similar to that of Alec or Jane."

"Is she gifted?"

"Yes, she is gifted, but it's a talent I already have. She can control minds, but I already have Chelsea and Corin for that. And what was worse was that Alec and Jane wanted to leave me to raise the child on their own."

"Mine leave, but then they come back. If you release a bird and it flies away, then it was never really yours to begin with. But if it comes back, then you know that you're loved. They did come back to you, didn't they?" I asked. Both Alice and Scryan had said that Alec and Jane were with the Volturi, so I was fairly certain they must have returned.

"They never left. Jane had no patience for the kid and Alec turned out to be a suboptimal father; they were only twelve when I changed them."

"Then what happened to the baby?" I asked concerned.

"Sulpicia and Athenodora raised her until she became an adult. She still stays with them and keeps them company most of the time, although she does occasionally go out on assignments with the Guard."

"How's Alec with her now that she's grown?"

"It's a little backwards, because Alec is still twelve, but his daughter is now fully grown. She is the adult and he is the child. They are friends, but they avoid each other. But back to the point of this call: I already agreed to let the hybrids live. There can be no doubting that statement, because I have one too. There is no need to hide."

"But she's talented as well."

Our possession of a new talented coven member would seem less suspicious given the claim that the child was a biological relative. We could not help it if she was talented, because we did not purposely seek out her talent. But, I knew Aro would be suspicious still.

"I would not steal from you."

"My son's an empath who feels emotions. The new child is a stronger empath and she couldn't handle the emotions of the humans. We had to distance ourselves from them, for her sake." I wished to describe Ashley's talents as more of a burden than a gift so as to not draw attention to the value of possessing such a gift.

"Then it is fortuitous that you should eat animals, but why would you also need to hide from your own kind?"

"Alas, the child's so vulnerable to emotions that even those of animals are too much. We have to acquire the blood for the child and feed her out of a cup," I said hoping to distract Aro from the idea that we were hiding.

"I have never heard of such a thing! You have a strange family indeed, but that does not answer my question. Why have you hidden from _me_?"

"We hide from you now because my daughter sees you mean to burn us."

"Why were you hidden before Amun?"

"We were not. We were isolating the child from human emotions."

"Then why have no other vampires been to visit you? Do you not have friends?"

"They haven't come because there are no humans to drink and even vampiric emotions are hard on the child. We must all control our feelings so the child doesn't suffer. I don't think you realize what a curse it is."

There was a long pause in which I was sure Caius was transferring his thoughts on the matter. "You mean to tell me that you are not planning to overthrow my rule?"

"I am not. I have no plans to rule, nor does anyone in my coven."

"Then why have you gathered all of your allies against me! I know they are with you, because they have disappeared!"

"They joined us for their own safety this morning when they learned your Guard was looking for them."

"Ah, but here you have been cornered in a lie! You claim that your hybrid cannot handle even vampiric emotions and yet you surround yourselves with more vampires!" Aro accused.

"We've been experiencing difficulties with the new additions, it's true. My daughter stays with the child on one side of the compound and the others are asked to stay away. But, they don't drink animals and wish to return to you right away. Would you let them live if they came back? We're not prepared to satiate their thirst."

"If they were to touch my hand and prove that they were not planning to act against me."

"But, they can't touch you or you'll know where we are. Are you prepared to leave us in peace?"

"Yes, if you were to share your touch with me and prove your loyalty."

And now I was backed into a trap. I could think of no reason to refuse Aro and yet I could by no means touch him and give away the secret of the eggs. And worse, that we knew all of the Volturi's secrets. "I would, but my daughter tells me I shall die either way," I lied.

There was another pause before Aro answered, "You will die either way only if you are lying to me. You cannot hide behind your shield forever, because my Guard will find you eventually."

"I hope not, please reconsider, I truly mean you no harm."

"No, Amun had some interesting thoughts," Aro said, finally revealing his real reason for the failed peace talks.

"And what would those be?"

"He thought that you might know who killed my sister," Aro answered, and I was quiet for several minutes before he continued. "Do you know what happened to Didyme, Carlisle?"

"No Aro, I don't know," I lied calmly.

"Amun seemed to think you had a vampire who could see the past."

"I lied to him, to convince him not to change Sonja. I tried to talk him out of building a larger coven, but I don't know what happened and we have no such vampire. Who did Amun think had done it?"

"He did not know, but for some reason, he was convinced that I knew. Why would I know?" His voice was cold, hard, and calculating.

"You wouldn't. If you did, you would've sought vengeance by now. She was your sister after all."

"Why did you tell Amun that I knew?"

"I was making up a story to convince him not to add to his coven, because I didn't want you to kill him for it."

"I do not believe you. Why don't you touch my hand and prove to me that you are telling me the truth?"

"Aro, you and I both know I won't survive if I touch your hand. Is Marcus there with you now? Does he know what Amun knew?" I asked, showing my hand at last. The peace talks were breaking down and I knew it, so I had no other choice.

"No…to both. But I do not think we have any more to discuss until you are willing to submit yourself to my mercy."

"Does Caius know?"

"Yes, he is here with me now. Does that make just the three of us then?"

"No, we have spread the word wide, sf you kill me, my knowledge won't be irradiated," I warned in a risky move. Threating Aro was like poking a nest full of fire ants: I bad move regardless of circumstance.

"That is too bad."

"You can't erase all of us and I have left insurance of that. Even if you get every vampire on this planet, I've left a message with a human bank. If my family can't be contacted for an extended period of time, the message will be released to the human news," I said, still making it up as I went, but thinking that I really should leave a message with the humans, because even if Aro was willing to wipe out all other vampires, he would still need to hide his secret from Marcus. He would never destroy Marcus, because he was too valuable to him, both because of his talent and for emotional reasons. Aro and Marcus had been together for over four thousand years.

"That is against our laws."

"That depends on what the message says. It doesn't mention vampires, only who killed your sister. Tell me, is Caius really all right with that knowledge?"

"He does not know everything."

"Then it might be in your best interest to let my family be. We aren't harming anyone."

"I don't think I can let that happen, because you have broken our rules."

"By knowing the truth or by spreading it?"

"By gathering against me. Not only have you recruited dozens of allies, but you have changed at least two more vampires, making a coven of ten. I cannot forgive such a betrayal." And with that the peace talks officially failed, miserably.

And so I accepted that we would not be allowed to live under Volturi rule. We had not violated any law; we just wanted a larger family and knew too much. It did not seem like death was a fair punishment for such a crime, so we would fight.


	42. Chapter 40

Edward's POV:

With all of our friends, family, and allies here our island was a little crowded. The most serious issues with the overcrowding were potential fights and a shortage of blood. Vampires are territorial and having too many of them in one location was like having too many male lions in a small cage. And we had no humans for our guests to drink, although we had plenty of blood and animals, so they would have to make do with our diet. We had enough synthetic blood in cold storage to cover everyone, but our supplies would only last so long. Eventually we would have to step up our production or come out of hiding.

At least vampires do not need to sleep, so housing could wait. Only Nessie and her family would need to sleep, which meant there were just eight beings to accommodate. Nessie and Jacob stayed with Bella and myself and the other six hybrids were staying in the guesthouse, which only had two rooms, but we set the living room up with a bed as well.

Esme was already talking of laying a foundation for hybrid apartments. The vampires would also need houses built, because they had all agreed to stay until the situation with the Volturi was resolved, but the vampires could wait. Hybrid housing and increasing our blood production came first. We were in a state of emergency and everything else could wait and everyone was making do with what we had.

Everyone was coming together, thanks to Aiden, in a way uncommon to vampires. The most extreme example of said togetherness was the fact that the Irish and Egyptian covens had decided to merge, now that there were only two Egyptians left. And then Maggie of the Irish mated with Sean of the English, joining those two covens as well. We had met Sean and the rest of his coven, which consisted only of the two brothers, Sean and David, back in the year two thousand twenty seven. We ran across their scent while looking for Alistair and have been friends ever since. And now they were an official coven of three, because David had added his newborn mate, Caroline, just months ago. It was a bit of a coincidence that the English were living so close to the Irish this entire time and yet never met, and once they did meet, it was pretty much love at first sight for Maggie and Sean.

As horrible as the threat of war with the Volturi was, some good did come from the situation. Not only did it bring Sean and Maggie together and reunite Bella and me with our first born, but also, Masen and Eliza got to meet their sister for the first time. It was a little hard to explain to Nessie why we were hiding her brother and sister from her, but once we did, she understood. Nessie and Jacob even agreed to stay with us, taking over Eliza's room.

Nessie and Jacob stayed up talking with us all night long last night. She kept waiting for one of them to fall asleep, like a hybrid child, but she was the only one to yawn and Jacob was the only one to fall asleep. Masen sat quietly by Bella's side and Eliza was on Nessie's other side, while we talked as a family.

"What was Mom like when she was a newborn?" Eliza asked.

"Well Mom was never the typical newborn," Nessie began, elbowing Jacob gently, because he had let out a particularly loud snore. "The instinctual bloodlust was missing and she was too busy playing the new mother to wreak havoc on the humans."

"I know she got into plenty of trouble," Eliza countered.

"Only if you ask Aunt Alice. She was always on Mom about destroying her clothes," Nessie replied.

"What about that time when Mom almost told our secret to the human Angela?" Eliza asked, winking at Masen. It was not often that those two got along, but Eliza did have a knack for picking out stories he would like and then convincing the owner of the memory to tell it, which was one of the few things she ever did for his benefit, unless you counted every moment she was not actively hitting him.

"Alright, you got me: I wanted to tell my friend not to worry about me," Bella admitted. "Angela thought that something was wrong because I would never agree to meet with her in person. She thought Edward was abusing me or something, but Alice stopped me before I could tell her too much."

"Secrecy is important to us all," Nessie added.

"It wasn't just Angela: Mom told Charlie and almost told Renee," Eliza insisted.

"Be nice, Eliza. Charlie and Renee were your grandparents, so of course your mother would want to tell them," I defended Bella.

"Charlie was a terrific grandfather; you would've liked him," Nessie reminisced.

"You'd have liked my mother too. Not spending more time with her before she got sick was my biggest regret," Bella replied.

"You could not have known," I said, squeezing Bella's hand in support.

Renee had gotten skin cancer when Nessie was only five years old. We had been waiting until her growth stabilized to introduce her to her grandmother, because we did not want to frighten Renee, but those plans changed when Renee got sick. She had the best treatment possible and we had rushed to her side, but there was nothing that could be done. Nessie did get to meet her before she passed, but they never really got to know each other, because the time was too short and Renee was too sick.

"At least we had plenty of time with Grandpa Charlie. He used to take me fishing. We'd sit out on the river with our lines out for hours," Nessie said changing the subject.

Charlie died of Alzheimer's back in two thousand forty-one. Bella had thought about changing him in order to save him. And before Charlie, she had wanted to save her step father Phil and before that, her mother. But Bella and I had talked it through and decided that changing her family was a very selfish thing to do. Not everyone wanted to be a vampire, so she let them all pass in peace when their time came.

"Why didn't you jump in and catch the fish with your hands?" Eliza asked. "It would've been quicker."

"It's not about how many fish you catch or how fast! It's about communing with nature and bonding with my grandfather," Nessie answered.

Eliza and Masen looked at each other and both shrugged, as if to say, "I didn't get it either."

"I used to have the best times over at Grandpa's house growing up," Nessie continued. "His second wife, Sue, used to bake us a pie and set it on the counter to cool. But I'd snatch up a piece and eat it so fast that they couldn't even see. Then I'd blame it on Grandpa and he wouldn't even remember that he hadn't eaten the pie!"

"Renesmee Cullen!" Bella exclaimed outraged, even though we had scolded our daughter for her behavior hundreds of years ago.

"What, Bells?" Jacob asked groggily, just waking up.

"Sorry, Jake, I didn't mean to wake you," Bella said.

"No worries; it's almost morning anyway," Jacob replied, looking out the window at the pitch black sky. The sun barely rose at all before it set again during the winter.

"You should go to bed," I told Nessie and Jacob, breaking up the family reunion.

Nessie went up to Eliza's room to sleep, but Jacob declined saying, "I slept all night: I'm not tired anymore, but I think I'll take a shower." His stench was no worse than his usual putrid rotting dog covered in feces just rolled in a sulfur bog shape-shifter smell, but we had guests coming, so I was not about to argue with the shower plan.

And with Nessie off in dream-land and Jacob in the shower, Bella and I were finally left alone with Masen and Eliza, just like it used to be back in the days before the Volturi decided to kill us. Bella, Masen, and Eliza were sitting on the couch playing video games when I heard three sets of thoughts approaching. Eliza and Masen jumped up and raced to the door, opening it before our guests arrived. I turned to Bella and said, "It's your turn to be on kid detail- you were the one who let Alice sucker you into watching her monsters." And as I said this, Jackson, Allison, and Alice came running through the door.

"Yeah, I know, but when Jasper, Ashley, and Scryan all want me to do the same thing, I can't resist," Bella said, before adding, "Hi, Alice."

"Just so we're clear, where are you leaving Ashley and Scryan?" I asked Alice, because all that was going through her head was a non-stop stream about where she, Jasper, Peter, and Charlotte would be hunting. They would be hunting on the island, to prevent the formation of a scent trail for the Volturi to find, and she wanted me to know where they would be so that we could find them in case of an emergency. The emergency was likely to be wherever Ashley and Scryan were being left.

"Ashley's with Aiden and Carlisle. They're monitoring the new cell-culture vats, which should keep the kids out of trouble. There won't be any strangers over there today, so Ashley will be fine. Plus Aiden always calms her down," Alice replied.

The blood manufacturing facility was the one place we had not let our guests convert into temporary lodging. The most obvious reason being that it is not a good idea to put a vampire in the same room as the entire island's blood supply, which was a disaster waiting to happen. We could not risk our blood, because there was no telling how long we would be forced to cower on this island. Neither Alice nor Scryan could see a resolution to this conflict, which meant that it was not going to resolve anytime soon and that we would be stuck here dependent on our blood manufacturing facility indefinitely.

And the manufacturing plant could not be used as housing, because there was no room. Esme designed the building to have an entire extra floor for future growth, but that was eight hundred years ago. It had not grown much at first, but now that we had the guests, we had ordered so many new cell-culturing vats that the second floor was full to the brim. We had all been helping with the arduous task of seeding the new vats with blood stem cells, so that we could increase our production capacity and feed all of our guests, but it was an on-going process and required our constant attention.

"And Scryan?" I asked.

"We're taking Scryan with us. We were thinking of taking Jackson with us, but he didn't want to leave his sister unguarded with the hybrids around." And while Alice said this, she thought, 'He had a vision of a tribe of venomous hybrid shape-shifters and what they did to an innocent pair of nomads. Their venom is poisonous to us.'

"But Jacob and his pack are not venomous."

'I know, otherwise I'd never have let the wolves onto my island so close to my children, let alone let you watch my precious babies when you have those monsters in your house,' Alice thought. "But still, Jackson wants to be here to protect his sister and we don't want to take three children with us. Just make sure the hybrids stay on the other side of the room from my kids so I can see them at all times."

And then Alice left and the four children went back to their video games. I heard Jacob turning off the water and getting out of the shower, so I caught Bella's eye, before heading into the small kitchen to make a breakfast of human food. If Bella was watching the kids, that meant I would have to watch the hybrids, and that included appeasing Jacob's massive appetite. I had a plate of eggs and pancakes and a soda ready for him when he came into the kitchen.

Jacob dived right into the food like he was starving, but he was thinking, 'Man you're really out of touch with breakfast Edward. It's supposed to be bacon with eggs or pancakes with syrup, not pancakes with eggs. And either milk or juice in the morning, not soda. I'd feel sorry for your kids, but they don't eat.'

"We are all out of perishable beverages," I said, before diving into the subject I wanted to talk to him about. "Listen Jacob, you know your actions on behalf of the Quileute Nation are going to come into question, right?" He nodded, scarfing down his food. "Alice plans on sitting you down and asking where you get off attacking Sudan."

Jacob, as Chief of the Quileutes, had signed off on the United States' attack on Sudan. Ever since the latest American Revolution, the Quileutes were in control of what was once Washington State and northern Idaho. As one of the richest States, thanks to Alice's management of their stock portfolio, they held a lot of power in the government. Jacob was essentially governor of their State and in a position to stop this war.

"They're not exactly defenseless, Edward, you know that. You aren't the only rich family to move your wealth into the Sudanese pound," he replied, after swallowing a huge mouthful. When the United States fell, the dollar went with it, so Alice exchanged our fortune from American dollars to the rising Sudanese pound. And she did so before everyone else, so we tripled our net worth in the process.

"Having enough money to defend against attack is no reason to attack."

"You realize that they're gonna kill us all if we do nothing?"

"No, their virus kills humans. You are half shape-shifter, so you will survive."

The entire Sudanese population, as well as the populations of the surrounding countries, had become infected with New Ebola. Those infected with the virus were asymptomatic with a normal life expectancy, but were capable of spreading the virus, which had a hundred percent lethality in Caucasian humans. Thus explaining why the United States and Europe had declared war on the otherwise innocent African people, in order to keep them in one place and prevent the virus from spreading.

"I've got a responsibility to my people. I may survive the virus, but they won't."

"They would have: Alice saw their survival. She used to see two species of humans resulting from the aftermath of this virus. If given a few hundred years in isolation, the Sudanese will evolve away from classic _Homo sapiens_ into _Homo sudanesiensis_. A population barrier would have formed and New Ebola would lose its ability to infect the original species. Now she only sees the latter surviving," I replied.

We had warned Jacob and Nessie hundreds of times not to let the United States attack, but they never quite believed that they were doomed if they attacked and would survive if they did nothing, because it was counter-intuitive. Although, as the war drew nearer, Nessie and Jacob became busier and harder to reach and many of our calls had gone unanswered in the last few weeks. Luckily the call warning of the Volturi had made it through, although it had been Seth, not Jacob, who answered this time. Come to think of it, Alice had gone straight to calling Seth, not bothering to try to reach Nessie or Jacob.

"Is the future set?" Jacob asked in horror, finally realizing what he had done. He had cleared his plate, so I refilled it with more pancakes.

"No, the future can always change. If everyone pulls out of Sub-Saharan Africa, your species will most likely regain its future."

"Two species? Are you sure?"

"Yes. You know they were evolving before the virus," I answered. The recent evolution in Sudan and near-by countries was the reason behind the recent rise in wealth.

Back in the twenty-second century, when Cesarean Sections became common practice in Sub-Saharan Africa, brain sizes began to increase in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. The genes for larger heads must have been present all along, but it took the removal of the necessity for live births to allow natural selection to begin making smarter humans. Once the trend was clear, the wealthy began to buy their way into these populations, hoping for super-smart children themselves. The biracial children survived, but the rich parents invariably succumbed to New Ebola, alerting the world to the danger.

'That's the other reason everyone wants 'em dead,' Jacob thought as he considered his options. He would have had more sway in person, but he could still phone in his request to stop the war.

"You have to see how wrong this war is," I urged him. Jacob had just signed off on the war last week and they had yet to invade Sudan, so there was still time. "You can't genocide a people because they are ill and if you try, you will be the ones to die."

"How? How can we lose?"

"Every soldier on the ground will die of New Ebola. That and the Sudanese will retaliate ten-fold. Are you forgetting that they are smarter than the rest of you?"

"But they don't have nuclear weapons and we do."

"They will make their own. Having brains that size will allow them to develop even deadlier weapons," I revealed and Jacob's face went pale with the realization of what he had done. He even paused with his fork mid-air, forgetting he had been about to shove a pancake into his mouth.

My moment with Jacob was interrupted by my cellular phone beeping. When I looked down there was a new text message from Alice, "The Quileutes survive- I don't know how you got through to him when I've been trying for months- thanks, Alice."

I typed my reply to my sister, while Jacob finished his breakfast. Then he went upstairs to make some calls to the Quileute elders he had left in charge of the tribe and I cleaned up the kitchen, before joining Bella and the kids in the living room. We had to keep it quiet, because Nessie was still sleeping and Jacob was using the phone, so band practice was out. The kids were bored of the video games and about ready to riot when Nessie finally woke up.

Nessie came downstairs with Jacob, who had finally finished passing along his orders to the tribe, just before noon, which meant the kids could finally pull out their instruments and start jamming. We only got through two songs before the rest of the hybrids showed up at our door. I could hear their thoughts coming, but I had hoped that they would just watch, without interrupting our practice. I had no such luck.

Jackson and Allison had not interacted with the hybrids in the short amount of time since our guests arrived on our island. It was one thing to carry on with life when there were only two hybrids in the room and one of which was only a harmless vampire hybrid. But with four wolves in the room, they ditched their instruments and took up a defensive stance with their backs to each other and were both considering bolting from the house. Allison was planning on running to her parents, knowing that Jasper would protect her from the hybrids, while Jackson was thinking of going to Ashley, because he was worried the hybrids might harm his little sister.

We managed to calm everyone down, but band practice was ruined for the day, so I decided to take Alice's advice and have the hybrids sit on one side of the living room, while the kids huddled on the other side. There was a good twenty feet of space separating the two groups, which made everyone feel more at ease, but an awkward silence filled the air. Allison and Jackson were scared of the Quileutes and not too happy about the presence of the hybrid vampires and Masen and Eliza were not particularly familiar with the strangers either. And Leah, Seth, and Embry were nervous to be trapped in a room with six vampires, even though Bella and I were practically family.

Jacob and Nessie were the only two who seemed okay with the guest list. They had almost become accustomed to Eliza and Masen and were not bothered by the two new children. Nessie kept marveling at the family resemblance between her aunt and uncle and Allison and Jackson, while Jacob kept thinking about their powers. He knew that Alice and Jasper had four children and that there were two psychics, an empath, and a know-it-all among them, but he did not know which was which and he was curious as to just what could be done with these powers, so I decided that a demonstration of Allison's power was just the thing to break the ice.

"Allison, can you explain vampire and shape-shifter genetics to our guests?" I asked, hoping that this would work.

Allison complied, while Jackson, Masen, and Eliza stood guard around her. But when she got to the part where vampire hybrids could mate with vampires, humans, shape-shifters, and other hybrids, Leah had a question.

"How's it possible that hybrids can lay eggs and give live birth?" Leah asked. "If female hybrids keep their eggs inside for internal fertilization with a human, then they won't be released into the environment to make eggs."

"The egg pouch can sense what type of creature our mate is through his or her venom. If the partner is venomous, the female releases gametes into the environment and prepares for egg implantation in the egg pouch. If not, the oocytes are retained for internal fertilization," Allison answered.

"Is that why Nahuel and I haven't gotten pregnant?" Leah asked hopefully. "Because we'll have to lay eggs?"

"No, Nahuel's also a hybrid, so you've got to reproduce the human way."

"But Nahuel's venomous," Leah countered.

"Yes, but not fully. He makes enough venom to change a human, but hybrid venom lacks the transduction signal recognized by the egg sack. If you want children you'll have to bare them in your own body," Allison explained.

Leah's burgeoning hope for children died with this news because she and Nahuel had been trying to get pregnant the human way for over a thousand years. Nahuel sensed Leah's inner turmoil and wrapped his arms around his wife saying, "It's okay, sweetie. It's like I said before: we can adopt whenever you're ready." She buried her face into his neck and started crying.

"I don't see what the big deal is. If the she-wolf is too stuck-up to stop shifting for the two months it'd take to have a child just because of a few wrinkles or stretch marks, then I don't think she should have children," Allison replied rudely. Eliza, Masen, and Jackson nodded and added murmurs of agreement. Well Eliza and Jackson murmured, but Masen just nodded and sent telepathic murmurs.

All of the hybrids dropped their jaws in shock at this news and a million questions were floating around their heads simultaneously.

"What'd you just say?" Seth asked.

"You heard my sister: your sister doesn't deserve to adopt children," Jackson said.

"No, about how Leah could have children if she stopped shifting," Seth replied.

"What about it?" Allison asked defensively.

"Calm down, there has clearly been a misunderstanding. Allison, Leah and the rest of us were not aware that she needed to stop shifting to get pregnant. She thought that she was infertile. Leah, Allison was not aware that we did not already know this," I said.

"So all I have to do to have a baby is stop shifting?" Leah asked stunned.

"Yes," Allison replied annoyed at our stupidity, because she could not understand how we did not know.

"Leah, let's go talk about this in private," Nahuel suggested.

Leah agreed, so Nahuel stood up and led her out the door, leaving silence in their wake. Well audibly there was silence, mentally the hybrids still had a million thoughts running through their heads. The majority of said thoughts focused on Leah and the possibility that she might be able to conceive a child and how wonderful this news was.

And while the hybrids sat in stunned silence, Allison and Jackson's impressions of them just kept declining. They were both in agreement that the hybrids in general were whiney, stuck-up, morons, which was not exactly fair. I was thinking about what I could do to encourage everyone to get along, when I heard a thought pop into Jacob's head.

'I wonder if one of our Spirit Warrior ancestors married a hybrid. Maybe that was how the Quileutes were able to turn into wolves,' Jacob thought.

"Excellent idea, Jacob," I announced before turning to Jackson. "Jackson, can you show us a vision about how shape-shifting came to the Quileutes?"

"Sure," Jackson replied warily. He was unnerved by the presence of the hybrids, so before he searched for the vision, he switched positions with Allison. Now he was the one being guarded by the others.

'Masen?' I thought to get my son's attention.

'Yes, Dad?'

'Will you please tell Jackson to be careful in how he answers that question. The Quileutes have very specific legends as to their origins, so he should not come right out and tell them that they are wrong. Tell him that they think they are descended from Spirit Warriors who magically transformed into shape-shifters.'

'Sure thing,' Masen replied before passing on my message to Jackson.

'What? They can't possibly be that stupid to think they're descended from Spirit Warriors when they're clearly shape-shifters, that makes no sense!' Jackson thought and began looking for something more general and having to do with the other Native American tribes with shape-shifter heritage, in order to avoid revealing the truth. After about fifteen minutes of searching, he finally found a vision and returned to the present.

"Shape-shifters always valued human life far more than vampires or werewolves ever did. They've always kept human pets for their amusement, but they weren't always nice about it. They walked amongst the humans as animal and Earth spirits and demanded worship and sacrifice," Jackson began.

"Over time, the shifters grew to love their pets like humans do dogs and cats. As their affection grew, they became nicer in their treatment of their pets. Many shifters even took humans as temporary mates. Shifters are venomous, so they could've bit the humans and transformed them, but they rarely did so."

"Wait," Jacob interrupted. "We aren't venomous."

"Have any of you ever bitten a human?" Jackson asked in reply.

"No," Jacob answered and Seth and Embry shook their heads too.

"Then how can you know?" Jackson asked. "Allison, are they venomous?"

"The first shape-shifter hybrids were just as likely to be venomous as the vampire hybrids. They've lost their venom over time, due to inbreeding within their tribe and lack of gene flow with the shape-shifters. But still, a small fraction would be venomous if they tried," Allison answered.

The Quileutes had nothing to say in response to this, but they were all thinking about this new information. Seth was thinking, 'Hmm, I remember Quil the eighth telling me that one of his pack had a stinging bite. Maybe he was venomous and the venom made the bite sting.'

While Seth thought, Jackson continued, "There was a taboo on biting humans except for when soldiers were needed in times of war. Shifters mated for life only with other purebloods, but if a shifter lost his mate or even if someone hadn't found their partner yet, they'd look to the humans for company.

"When a human male was chosen, the shifter would invariably produce a hybrid egg. But no hybrids had ever been produced before and the shifters could tell that there was something wrong with the hybrid eggs, because they were disgorged after only a month. Without the typical hundred years of gestation, they concluded that the eggs couldn't possibly be viable, so they tossed them away. And even if the eggs were viable, it was considered reprehensible to mix the DNA of the two species, because that was even worse than transforming a human.

"When a female human was chosen, she'd invariably become pregnant with a forbidden hybrid. As soon as the pregnancy was noticed, the shifter responsible would take the life of the mother in order to ensure that the monstrosity within her didn't survive. And since shifter babies required blood to survive, the pregnant human females were fed to them, in order to not waste.

"But even though this killing was common practice, the shifters still thought of themselves as benevolent towards the humans. They compared themselves to the vampires and werewolves and decided that they were doing their humans a favor, because at least they kept the other eldritch creatures away. And the other eldritch creatures were so much worse to humans.

"That was the atmosphere the first hybrid was born into. Her shifting parent took the form of a giant sparrow and was called Soaring Spirit. Soaring Spirit reached his two thousandth birthday, the age of adulthood, without imprinting and so decided to take a human pet to fill his time while he waited. In those days, shifters waited for an imprint to mate and if imprinting never occurred, then they'd stay single indefinitely."

"Soaring Spirit was a kind man and he treated his pets better than the other shifters. He stayed with his first human until he died of old age."

"Wait, I thought the female humans were fed to the babies for their blood as soon as they got pregnant," Jacob interrupted.

"They were. But Soaring Spirit's humans were always male, so he didn't have that problem," Jackson answered.

There was a long pause, but when no one offered up any additional questions, Jackson continued, "So Soaring Spirit's first human died of old age and he took another. White Cloud was barely a teenager when Soaring Spirit lured him away from his village. He grew to love Soaring Spirit and was curious to know everything about him. And like all shifters who took male humans for lovers, Soaring Spirit produced hybrid eggs."

"Wait," Jacob once again interrupted. "How could he produce hybrid eggs if they were both dudes?"

"Ali?" Jackson asked deferring to his sister's expertise.

"Shape-shifters could switch their gamete type. Werewolves can do the same, but vampires lost this ability because it wasn't on the vampiric chromosomes. It was on a somatic chromosome and because there's no unbroken vertical line of descent in the vampiric lineage, this chromosome was lost," Allison explained while thinking, 'I'd explain the molecular mechanism behind the process, but it'd be lost on these hybrids.'

"Does that mean Soaring Spirit switched sexes and became a girl?" Embry asked.

"No, he was a boy, he just made oocytes instead of sperm," Allison answered.

"Can we switch our gametes too?" Seth asked curiously.

"No, your kind has interbred too much with the humans and have lost it. Only werewolves still possess gamete-switching," Allison answered.

The Quileutes were silent, so Jackson continued, "Soaring Spirit retched up a hybrid egg in front of White Cloud, who wanted to know what it was. Soaring Spirit answered him, while throwing the egg away, like all good shifters did. But White Cloud wanted children, so he continued to ask questions about the eggs that were invariably produced every month.

"Over time White Cloud learned the secret to implantation, but Soaring Spirit continued to destroy the eggs and White Cloud dared not ask for one, for he knew it was forbidden. But still the idea was there in the back of his mind as he watched his eggs being tossed away month after month. After a few years, Soaring Spirit came to trust White Cloud greatly. When he was called away by his coven only moments after disgorging an egg, he tossed it in the trash and went, thinking nothing of the fact that the egg had yet to die.

"As soon as White Cloud was sure Soaring Spirit was gone, he reached into the trash and pulled out the egg. He swallowed it, before going about his business of preparing dinner for the pair, because adult shifters ate human food.

"When Soaring Spirit returned, he didn't even look in the trash or notice that the egg was missing, and so weeks passed before he realized anything was wrong. After two weeks, a bulge began to appear on White Cloud's abdomen, but other than that, he seemed fine, so he went about as usual. Soaring Spirit noticed, but White Cloud brushed it off saying, 'I'm just getting fat now that I'm getting older.'

"Soaring Spirit let it go, but a week later when the bulge had tripled in size, he began to think his human was sick. Cancer wasn't common in those days, but there were stories about humans with unusual growths dying, so Soaring Spirit mistook the signs for illness. He told White Cloud of his concern, but the human just brushed it off saying, 'I feel fine. Let's just wait awhile and see what happens.'

"Soaring Spirit agreed to wait, but when another week passed and the bulge was so large that White Cloud appeared to be nine months pregnant, he could wait no more. He hadn't imprinted on his human, but he loved him dearly and couldn't bear to watch another one die. He bit White Cloud and then explained what he had done.

"White Cloud was horrified. He knew that he wasn't sick and that the bulge in his stomach was the egg, but he had been powerless to stop Soaring Spirit, who had bit him before he had a chance to confess the truth. And once he was bitten, the venom paralyzed him while it worked its way through his system. It wasn't until two days later, when his blood was ruined, that he was finally able to move again and speak.

"White Cloud was still burning, so when he began to plead with Soaring Spirit and talk about hybrid eggs, he just dismissed it as a delusion caused by the transformation process. Everyone knew that eggs needed a hundred years of parasitism. There was no way his egg could've gone from implantation to the final stages of development in a months' time.

"It wasn't until the cracking sounds started emanating from White Cloud a few hours later that Soaring Spirit realized what was going on. The tainted blood couldn't be used by the hatchling, so the transformation process had trigger the hatching process, and the first hybrid shifter was emerging. Soaring Spirit watched at his lover's side as a beautiful baby girl emerged and the transformation process healed the hole she left behind.

"Soaring Spirit was amazed by the hybrid child. Where his skin was cold, hers was burning up. Where his heart failed to beat, hers fluttered quickly like a humming bird. Where his skin was pale, hers was the rich cappuccino of her human father's. Where his eyes were copper, hers were dark brown. While he had grown to adulthood impossibly slowly, she was growing before his eyes.

"But while there were many differences, there were also similarities. She was hard, fast, and intelligent, just like a shifter. She even shifted when she was only a week old. She took the form of a buffalo, the people's animal. Soaring Spirit was so enamored by his daughter that he quickly decided to pack her up and hide her from his people until she reached maturity. And since they were already tucked away in a cave to hide the fact that he had changed a human without his coven leader's permission, no one knew about the hybrid birth.

"Soaring Spirit got a second surprise the next day when White Cloud's transformation was finally complete. He held his new daughter in his arms as he gazed down at the newly created shifter and imprinted. He had waited over two thousand years for an imprintee and then there he suddenly was, looking up at him, and imprinting back!" Jackson exclaimed.

"How's that possible?" Jacob asked. "We imprint at first sight."

"Soaring Spirit did imprint at first sight. The first sight he had of White Cloud once he was changed," Jackson replied.

"Pureblood shape-shifters only imprint on members of their own species or hybrid shape-shifters, not humans. Hybrids can imprint on both," Allison added.

"Okay," Jacob replied slightly confused, but he let it go.

"Soaring Spirit took off with White Cloud and their daughter, Dancing Light, and hid for seven years until she was fully grown. Fearing for their daughter's safety, they encouraged her to take a human mate and live amongst the humans, so that the other shifters wouldn't find out. Dancing Light married a hunter from one of the plains tribes. She bore him many hybrid offspring before he died and then she married another man from another tribe and did the same, until his natural life ended too.

"By the time Dancing Light was on her third human, the shifters began to notice humans with special gifts; humans that weren't quite human. Dancing Light had given rise to so many children, who all grew quickly and had children of their own, that there were over a thousand hybrids walking around North America. When this fact came to the attention of the purebloods, they weren't pleased.

"The purebloods tried to eradicate the hybrids, but the hybrids were numerous and capable of defending themselves. It turned into a bloody battle with heavy casualties on both sides. In the end both sides suffered, but they came to a truce. The purebloods decided to cut their losses and grant the hybrids permission to exist. And from then on, other purebloods began to mate with humans, producing more hybrids. Your tribe isn't actually descended from that first hybrid, although there is a tribe with some of her descendants still living," Jackson concluded.

Jacob and the other Quileutes asked Jackson and Allison a few more questions, but we did not have time to satisfy their curiosity, because it was almost three. A race was scheduled to start at three and we did not want to miss it, so we all went out to the track. Everyone was already there when we arrived, including a newly returned Peter and Charlotte with Alice and Jasper. Our island was small so the hunting trip was completed, just seven hours after it had begun. As soon as they saw their parents, Allison and Jackson ran over to them and started telling them about how weird the hybrids were.

Eliza and Masen stayed near Bella and myself, although they did venture closer to the rail. The other hybrids went down as well, but Nessie and Jacob stayed back with us. Rosalie's hot rod class had just finished another two cars bringing the total to four so the races promised to be extra exciting today. Lily, Rosita, Violet, and Ashley were first up, but all of the other children were also on the schedule.

"Jake?" I heard Bella ask tentatively as we watched Lily take the lead.

"Yes?"

"Are you really okay with leaving your tribe behind?" Bella's compassion was one of the many things I loved about her and she was always thinking of how hard a situation was on someone else. Personally, I thought Jacob should be grateful that we saved him while we were saving Renesmee, because we could have left him behind.

Jacob thought about this for a moment before answering, "Well, they're safe, because there're enough wolves to protect the whole tribe. As long as they're safe I'm better off here, because I need to make sure Nessie's safe too."

And while Jacob and Bella talked, Nessie was watching Masen and Eliza, who were not making a very good impression. They had been trying really hard to be decent vampires and treat each other with civility, especially with their big sister present, because that was the type of behavior she expected from them. But behaving all day long was boring and wore thin and Nessie was at our house all night, every night now, so they were taking the opportunity afforded to them by the racetrack to misbehave.

Eliza and Masen had started off with an innocent enough game of rock, paper, scissors. But then they had switched to rock, paper, scissors, slap, which was the same thing except for the winner gets to slap the loser's hand. Then that escalated to pinching and just now, into headlocks and noogies. At this rate they will have escalated to decapitation before the race even finishes.

'I can't believe you and Mom just let this behavior continue. You were always right there correcting me when I was the slightest bit wrong,' Nessie thought at me, while she stepped up to Eliza and Masen. "You know Eliza, Masen here is the only brother we're ever gonna get. Masen, Eliza and I are the only sisters you're ever gonna get. I recommend that you think about that before you alienate each other for the rest of your lives. The damage you do today may be the damage that can't be undone tomorrow."

'We were just playing,' Masen projected, while still firmly in the headlock.

"Yeah, I wasn't hurting him or anything," Eliza added, finally letting Masen up.

'It's not a big deal,' Masen added, standing up and straightening his clothes.

"It is a big deal," Nessie insisted. "Your relationships with your siblings are models for all of the relationships you have throughout your entire lives. It's part of your character. Do you think that in the adult world people'll want to be friends with you and do business with you if your siblings hate you? Most people think that there's something wrong with you if you can't even get your family to like you. What about when you grow up and have children of your own? If you two aren't speaking to each other, then your children'll never get to know their family. How you treat each other now's gonna affect your lives for the rest of eternity."

Nessie had been encouraging Masen and Eliza to treat each other more civilly since she got here and it had been helping. It would seem that Nessie was the missing piece in our family puzzle. Without her, the puzzle had been a mess, but now she was pulling us all back together and trying to make everyone fit. That and she had a course in psychology about a decade ago. She has even been thinking about taking online courses in psychology and majoring in it, if she ever got off of this island.

Eliza and Masen did not get a chance to counter their sister's argument, because just then Rosita crossed the finish line and everyone stood up and cheered. Next up would be Carl, Aiden, Adriel, and Jackson, but before the second race could start, Scryan went into a vision. He was down lower, on one of the closer bleachers and we all ran to the rail, to get a better look at him, wanting to be ready for when he came back to us; Eliza, Masen, and I ran too, even though we could see the vision first hand.

"Forks," Scryan uttered in a dead tone.

Scryan could not see humans or hybrids, but what he saw did not include humans or hybrids. _He was with a group of vampires in a room in Volterra. Caius was speaking to Aro, Marcus, and the Guard. "We will look for traces of the Cullens wherever they have left them. We will search out every city where they have ever been known to live. Denali, Chicago, Rochester, Hoquiam, and Forks," Caius stated in the vision._

Scryan knew that of these cities, Forks would be the biggest problem. He may not have had any communication with the hybrids since they have been here, but he was best friends with Eliza. Scryan knew that Eliza's sister had been with the humans near Forks all of these years. And he knew that Nessie's smelly husband had left family there.

Without a vision of it, I did not know what would happen when the Guard visits Denali, Chicago, and Rochester, but I did have some idea about what would happen when they reached Forks and Hoquiam, because they would find wolves, lots of them. Nessie and the half vampires had stayed in La Push for over eight hundred years; no one noticed non-aging now that everyone lived to be three hundred and looked twenty everyday of it. Every Quileute male, and some of the females, for all of those years turned. Most of them stopped shifting and began to age again, but there were still four hundred years' worth of, or one hundred ninety-seven, wolves living in La Push.

The wolves would be able to defend the tribe and the Volturi Guard might even be caught unaware with far too few vampires. It did not take a psychic to see that this would not end well for the Volturi, but I could not help but think that neither would it end well for the wolves. Even if the scouting party were decimated, the Volturi would not be destroyed, because not every member of the Guard would be sent. Caius, Aro, Marcus, and their wives would definitely stay behind and there was the potential for high costs on both sides. Dozens of vampires, wolves, and humans would die if it came down to a battle.

Plus, the Volturi would invariably regroup and knowing Caius like I do, I would guess that they would return with more than enough vampires to slaughter the lot. He will not rest until the entire tribe, men, women, and children, were eradicated, eliminating the shifting menace for good. Even nearby tribes, like the Makah were in danger of being wiped out, just for precaution.

We could not let that happen. Jacob and his pack could not sit here while his tribe was slaughtered. He would have to go back, but he could not leave without risking our secret. If they were captured by the Volturi our secret location would be forfeit. And so we debated what course to take. Alice, who could see humans, looked for visions of her own, but even her visions were blurry from the hybrid presence, so we were flying blind.

We could evacuate the whole tribe, but they would never come here. With all the carnivorous vampires around and no humans to drink from, the Quileutes would never be safe. Jacob would not stand to see one of his own slaughtered. An accident would happen and a fight to the death would ensue. No, we could never all live in peace. We could all travel south to defend the Quileutes, but their wolves will be enough to defend them the first time. What they need defending from is the hoard that will be sent the second time. We could never defend the whole tribe against that…

Finally, it was decided that a lone Cullen would leave a trail away. Alice was chosen because she would be able to escape, because her visions would show her where the Guard was and forewarn her of any danger. Even with Demetri, their tracker, they would be too slow to catch a fortune-teller who was always one step ahead.

Alice would helicopter into Forks and then run south to the Amazon. She would leave her scent in the jungle, before moving south again, to Antarctica, the farthest place in the world from where we actually were. Once at the South Pole, she would take a helicopter to Australia, a plane to Russia, and a helicopter back home.

It should work. Alice saw it working. Scryan could see human-free snippets, with just Alice and the Volturi Guard, where it worked. And it should distract the Volturi from their search in Forks, so the Quileutes should be safe.

But Jasper did not like it. 'To risk Alice's life for the sake of just one hundred ninety-seven dogs? Surely her life is worth more than that!' he thought. "Alice, please don't do this. Don't leave me!" And as he begged, he altered Alice's emotional state so that she would not want to leave him. He wanted to ask for Ashley and Scryan's help in the matter, but decided to leave the children out of it.

But, Alice was used to it and was still able to think and reason in spite of the altered mental state. "I have to Jazz. We'll be safer if the wolves aren't questioned, because they know things. It has to be me. I won't risk the life of any of the children. I'm the only one who can go and come back without being caught. The wolves are the key to the Volturi tracking down our family. Once the tribe is destroyed Jacob's pack will seek revenge against the Volturi and they will be captured and we will be discovered. Think of the children," Alice pled. Of course she could not see the hybrids, so she did not know for certain how it would turn out, but her guess seemed plausible. She had more experience predicting the future than anyone.

And so Jasper had to let her go. They did not say a word, simply starring into each other's eyes communicating silently, and exchanging feelings. And so Alice left.


	43. Chapter 41

Jasper's POV:

Alice came back just two weeks after she left and those were the hardest two weeks of my life, because Alice was in danger and there was nothing I could do about it. She arrived in Forks just a week before the Volturi and Demetri had been so busy concentrating on Bella that he did not even notice when Alice reappeared on his radar. It was summer and for once it had not rained, so they caught her scent easily, and followed her trail, with Demetri re-attuning himself to her. They took the bait and everything went according to plan.

Alice stayed one step ahead, thanks to her visions, but the Guard was gaining on her. They were three days behind her in Mexico and it was only Scryan's assurances that his mother was safe that kept me from going after her. But by the time she got to Ecuador, they were just two days behind, and I could not take it anymore and I snapped. I was going to go after my wife and bring her back, even if it meant leaving my children or possibly getting caught. But the children and the nomads, who were all present when I made this decision, ganged up on me and forced me to stay. Peter, Fred, Randall, Charles, and Steve restrained me, while the female nomads guarded the exits.

Why did Alice have to tell them to keep a close eye on me and stop me from going after her before she left? And why was Scryan, my baby, on their side? Guarding the exits was pointless anyway, because I would have gone through the wall if Peter had not gotten me in a headlock so quickly.

"You'll be putting us all in danger if you leave a scent trail for the Volturi to follow to our island," Allison said, while the nomads had me subdued.

"Yeah, Dad, and think about Scryan and Ashley: Mom left them and now all they have is you. They've never been left before. Sure you've gone on hunting trips for a day, but nothing like this. You're scaring them right now, just because it looks like Uncle Peter's hurting you. Can't you feel how distraught Ashley is?" Jackson asked. "And she's not even here."

I nodded with Peter's arm still around my neck, because I could feel Ashley. Everyone could feel her, even though she was with Carlisle and Aiden again. Scryan had sent her away this morning, but I could still feel her anywhere on the small island. And when her fear and anguish spiked like it was now, everyone else could feel it too.

I was forced to stay and wait and cling to Scryan's every word as he told me of Alice's journey through Chile, with the Volturi only one day behind her. I was about to riot when a couple of humans crossed her path and he lost sight of her, but then they passed and she reached the tip of South America and swam south. A raft of penguins blurred his vision of her ocean crossing, which was unusual because he normally sees animals just as well as he does vampires.

The penguins too passed and Alice reached Antarctica unhindered. The Volturi were just hours behind her at the South Pole, but luckily Lenard was on time and on mark. He arrived at the South Pole landing sight just minutes before Alice reached said destination. I was never more grateful to a human than I was to Lenard when he dropped Alice off safe and sound at an airport in Australia. Lenard had not even questioned the strange orders when he got the call that we needed him for another emergency job. He had a new baby at home and needed the money, so he dropped everything and made the appropriate arrangements for us. And his parent company was kind enough to keep our dealings off of the books, so as not to leave a paper trail.

Once Alice was in Australia, she boarded a flight to Moscow and from there a private jet took her further north, to the small airfield in Dikson Russia, where another helicopter pilot from the same company was waiting for her. This time it was Chaz who was there to meet my wife; the pilot who had picked up the Romanians along with Alistair, Randall, and Mary. He flew her across the Arctic Circle to our island and within the range of Bella's shield. Fortuitously, Bella's shield had grown stronger over the years, so that she was now able to shield an individual up to two thousand miles away.

As the Volturi were running south, Demetri suddenly sensed that Alice was changing course and heading north. Jane, Felix, and Caius continued on to follow Alice's physical trail, but Demetri split off on his own. He was fairly certain she was in Australia and he raced there, only to find that her essence was heading north again, this time faster than a vampire could run. Again, he tried to follow and booked a flight north on a human jet too, but he had no way of knowing ahead of time what her final destination would be. He ended up taking the first flight he could get, which was to Beijing, but while he was trapped mid-flight, surrounded by humans, he felt Alice pulling away to the west of him. He was certain she was in northern Europe or Western Russia, but then she was gone. She had completely disappeared from his sixth sense.

Scryan saw Demetri traveling back to Volterra where he met up with Caius and the others and explained what he had seen. Felix was sent back to Australia, to look for clues, while Afton was sent to scour northern Europe and Eastern Russia. By this time Alice was already back at home with me, safe in my arms, but the Volturi were closing in on us. They may not know where we were, but they were now positive we were in the northern hemisphere, because of Demetri's testimony.

They waited in Volterra for Felix and Afton to come back with news of Alice, but also they were waiting on the return of Aleczandria, Bastien, Tran, and Gaston. Aleczandria, or Leczy, was Alec's hybrid daughter and Bastien was the guard member who had been new back when Allison and Jackson were babies. Tran and Gaston were the newest Guard members, added a few hundred years ago after Santiago was picked off by the Romanians; they were both big hulking vampires, but neither was as large or deadly as Santiago had been.

Leczy, Bastien, Tran, and Gaston had all been sent out on reconnaissance missions to gather intelligence on our allied covens after Amun's death. Our allies were of course missing in action long before they could get to them, but they still had to see what they could find out. Between the four of them, they searched Tanya's house in Denali, Siobhan's house in Ireland, Zafrina's jungle in the Amazon, Amun's abandoned temple in Egypt, Vladimir and Stefan's castle in Romania, and Alistair's rock and Sean and David's sewers in England. They found no answers at any of those locations, but they did find several trails leading north to various fields, all of which with evidence of helicopter landings in the recent past.

Leczy, Bastien, Tran, and Gaston had already called back and reported the helicopter landing sites they had found in Alaska, Brazil, Canada, and Ireland, but they had not returned. Instead the four Guard members were tracking down nomads and asking what they had heard about us and our allies. Many nomads had tidbits of information for them, like that the Denalis had been seen in their forest just last month, but no one had any useful information regarding our current whereabouts and so Leczy, Bastien, Gaston, and Tran were all heading back to Volterra.

Upon the return of the Guard members, Caius would announce his plan and Scryan could already see what he would say. First of all he thought that we owned a helicopter, because of the multiple helicopter landing sites, and he would tell the Guard to keep an eye out for more evidence that links us to helicopters. Second, between the four landing sites the Guard had found and Demetri's testimony, Caius thought that we were in the northern most region of the northern hemisphere, possibly in werewolf country.

Werewolf country was also in the Arctic Circle, but on the Russian side, in Siberia. And since werewolf country was in such close proximity to where we actually were, Caius was closing in on us far more quickly than we had been counting on. As soon as the Guard returned, Caius planned on heading out again and combing the Earth for us. He would use a grid-like pattern and cover the entire globe, but the majority of their efforts would be concentrated in the Arctic. He would comb the Arctic with a fine-toothed comb to find us if he had to.

I held Alice in my arms as Scryan told us of Caius' plan and I started thinking of counter strategies. There were too many of us to evacuate and we had nowhere to go. There was talk of packing up and relocating to the Andes Mountains, but it was just talk, because we knew Caius would search there too. Even if Bella somehow managed to keep us all shielded during the journey and we made it there undiscovered, there was still nowhere in the world that was remote enough that we could hide from the Volturi. And if a new location would not afford us an advantage hiding, then we might as well stay here, where we have the advantage of supplies and the home turf.

We bunkered down and held our collective breaths as the Volturi searched for us. They searched from the North Pole to the South Pole, down one longitude line and up another, looking for our scent. Twice they came near us as they searched the longitude lines to the east and then west of our island. Twice we stood huddled together too nervous to move as Scryan and Alice's visions foretold their journey and Edward translated, but then they moved past without catching our scent and so we melted from our too stiff poses and were safe for a time.

Caius continued his search for ninety-two years, never giving up on finding us, but he was stuck with his false assumption that we were in werewolf country, so he spent most of his time in Siberia. The werewolves hated Caius and they kept deliberately leaving false tracks, leading deep underground into unused caves, for him to find. And they had a sense of humor, because they would write our names in blood on the cave walls. It drove Caius mad with anger that his two greatest enemies seemed to be in cahoots.

We had not been in contact with the werewolves before, but Scryan, who could see the werewolves just as well as he could vampires, became convinced that they had a psychic on their side. He even began communicating with the psychic, by writing notes and leaving them on his desk for the other psychic to scry. The werewolf seer would do the same and pass messages back to us. After a few years of communication and ninety years of being hunted by the same man, a trust was established and we arranged to work together to infuriate Caius further.

We all marked baseballs with our scent, before packaging the balls up and having Lenard, who was one hundred thirty-eight years old now, pick the box up on one of his supply runs. He dropped it off in Alaska and had it shipped to an address in Siberia. Scryan had gotten the address of an abandoned human shack from one of his visions of the werewolves and the werewolves had gotten it from one of their visions of Scryan, so the package made it safely into werewolf hands without being intercepted.

Everyone gathered around Scryan and waited eagerly for the vision of what would happen, because we all wanted to know what Caius would do. 'The werewolves have used the balls to bait a trap for Caius,' Masen projected before Scryan could even return from the vision.

"Shut up and let Scry tell it for once," Eliza ordered, elbowing Masen in the stomach so hard that he let out an audible gasp. Masen had a habit of giving away the outcome before my son could ever finish his visions.

"They'll get him. Caius dies," Scryan announced returning to us.

And so ninety-two years after Amun's death, Caius followed a trail of Cullen scented baseballs into a frozen Russian lake and then into a small underwater cave where a dozen werewolves were waiting. He was torn to pieces and the pieces were brought to the surface and burned. Only Felix, Leczy, and Gaston had been with him on this trip, because Demetri, Jane, Afton, and Bastien were searching Alaska again. The three that were supposed to stay with Caius had split off earlier, going into town to hunt, while Caius had stayed behind to plan. But then he found the first ball in the snow and took off running, not even waiting for his Guard. It was the last mistake he ever made.

Caius was dead, but the Guard carried on his search in his memory; Aro made certain of it. They still sent scouts into the Arctic on a regular basis, feeling for our presence and scouring the tundra for any sign of us, but the scouts stuck to the more populated areas, so that they could feed, and also because that was where all the other vampires were. They never again searched anywhere near our island, which meant we had been right to stay put.

While Aro and the Guard searched, we went on with our lives as best as we could. We fortified our borders and spent hours every day in fight training, preparing for war, but even with war looming over our heads, we continued our usual day to day activities. We expanded our blood production, built new houses for all of our guests, and even sent the children back to school. And there was a very exciting new topic on the forefront of everyone's mind: reproduction.

Over the years, every couple had come to that magical moment when they looked down and saw their egg for the first time. Alice would see the eggs coming and give the couples plenty of warning. And most of the couples knew what they were doing, because they had disgorged eggs before. But they had thought that the eggs were gall stones and this was the first time that they knew what to do with them, and so this was the first time any of the eggs survived.

Peter and Charlotte were one of only two couples left now that had not had that magical first experience; Maggie and Sean were the other couple. They had disgorged eggs just five years before Amun's death and so it took another ninety-five years before they were ready to disgorge another two. Alice had told us last month that tomorrow would be the day and that my brother and his wife would finally get to hold their eggs in the palm of their hands and feel the wonder and amazement I felt.

I stopped by the blood manufacturing facility with the children on our way home from school today and Alice was waiting for me. She had everything Peter and Charlotte would need ready to go and packed up in a hiking pack, which she handed off to me. Peter would be stopping by our house so that we could have one last brother to brother chat before he took off into the forest with his wife for the big event. And while he was over, I was to give him the supplies. He could have stopped by the manufacturing facility himself, but I had to drop Allison off anyway and I wanted the chance to see him before he left.

The eggs will be brought back to the blood manufacturing facility and placed on a shelf with all of the other eggs, because we have no hosts for implantation. It was agreed that the eggs would stay in storage until the war ends and this pack contained everything necessary for the transition period between the egg-pouch and the storage shelf. It had two flow-cells to store the eggs, along with four units each of blood and venom, to create the stomach contents that would be flowed over the eggs to preserve them. And there were four units of egg-control blood, or egg-blood, to prevent the formation of new eggs. Finally there were two golf-ball sized generators to power and heat the flow-cells indefinitely. That should be enough for two vampires and two eggs to survive two days out in the tundra.

The eggs had to be kept at room temperature, even if it was freezing outside, or they would lose viability, so the heater was essential. We always think of ourselves as cold blooded, because we are colder than humans, but this is not the case. The core of our bodies actually maintains itself at a very constant twenty-five degrees Celsius, even when the extremities drop to ambient temperature. And since the eggs are kept at the proper temperature while inside, they will need to be kept at the same temperature once they are outside.

As for the egg-blood, it was also agreed that everyone on the island, including the hybrids, would take birth control until after the war. Hybrids do not make eggs and cannot store their offspring, so they had to be on birth control or risk having little babies to defend when the Volturi come knocking. And as for the vampires, they could continue to make eggs and we could continue to store them, but we will eventually run out of flow-cells and it takes a lot of blood and venom to keep all of those eggs fresh. And since there was no point making more eggs when we could not implant the ones we already had, everyone had agreed to take the egg-blood.

Those were the official reasons for the mandatory enforcement of birth control, but in reality most couples fell into one of two categories when it came to egg-blood. Some couples did not want children, declined to put their eggs in the flow-cells, and wanted to take the egg-blood so that they would never again have eggs to abort. The others already had two eggs in flow-cells and did not want more than two children.

Peter and Charlotte were of the second mind, because they definitely wanted their first two eggs, but could not imagine having four children. I knew that they were really looking forward to the disgorgement tomorrow. And best of all, once the eggs are disgorged, Alice and Scryan will be able to see them. Alice had already promised to draw a sketch of them right away and we were all looking forward to seeing that sketch and to seeing my brother's children for the first time. It would be years, maybe even centuries, before we could hold them, but at least we would be able to see them and know what we were fighting for and that those children would come to us just as soon as this war was over.

And so I left Allison there to help my wife with optimizing the blood-vats and I took my other three children home to meet Peter. He was already there, in my living room, pacing back and forth and emitting nervousness, apprehension, and uncertainty. "Just don't wipe off the eggs and you'll do fine brother," I said clapping him on the back and sharing my peace and serenity.

"I know, but I just keep thinking that by this time tomorrow I'm gonna be a father. What if I drop the eggs and they crack? I used to have to gather the chicken eggs for Mama back when I was a boy and I remember once my older brother threw an egg at me and made me drop all of the eggs in my hands. There was a great big mess of egg all over me and on the ground and Mama was so mad at me," Peter rambled.

"These aren't chicken eggs and they won't break that easily. You could play golf with one of 'em and they'd be fine, just as long as you use a field of blood and venom instead of grass."

"Scryan, what do you think? How's your favorite uncle gonna do with the eggs?" Peter asked.

"The sangtusion goes great Uncle Peter. You just need to put the eggs in the flow-cell like Dad says," Scryan said indicating the pack that was still on my back. Sangtusion was what the ancient vampires called the disgorgement in Jackson's visions. Scryan had picked the term, and many others like it, up from his brother.

"What's all this?" Peter asked as I handed him said pack.

"Flow-cells, blood, venom, and egg-blood. You've already started taking egg-blood, right? We don't want another accident," I said.

Carmen and Eleazar had accidently conceived a second set of eggs right after disgorging and aborting the first two, because they had not started taking the egg-blood yet. Gamete production resumes on the same day as disgorgement, and egg-blood takes three to seven days to start working. Eleazar and Carmen did not even start taking the egg-blood until two days after the disgorgement when they returned from their hunting trip, which left a week gap in which they were not protected.

Eggs are not harmed in anyway by egg-blood, so Carmen and Eleazar had continued to take it for years until Carlisle pulled out his old endoscope and confirmed the pair of parities. So there were more eggs on the way for them, but they were unwanted and would likely be aborted as well. It was a shame the accident had happened, but they had been the first to disgorge eggs and so the first to try egg-blood, and we now had precautions in place to guard against a repeat. Now we made sure that every couple started egg-blood the week before they were due to up-chuck eggs and took egg-blood with them.

"Yeah, we're taking it. No offense, but Char and I aren't crazy and we plan on stopping at two," Peter replied. "But what're these flow-cells for?"

"To put the eggs in," I answered. We had already explained this to everyone, so I was not sure why he was confused.

"Can't we just go straight into hosts?" he asked. "Lenard and Chaz are stopping by tomorrow with a big delivery. Allison told me she ordered a lot of supplies for our defense."

"And just how're you gonna get your babies back from Lenard and Chaz when it's time for the emergence in another hundred years?" I asked sarcastically. Lenard and Chaz had been our delivery humans for a long time now, and although they looked the other way when it came to our oddities, I highly doubt they would continue to do so if we parasitized them. They already knew too much as it was and we had been forced to ban the children from interacting with them ninety years ago, because the children should be grown by now and we did not want the humans to know that they were not.

"Call 'em up and ask 'em to come by for a delivery. They'll come right to me."

"Scryan! Did you see this? Do you think this is funny young man?" I asked, bending backwards and turning my face up to my youngest son, who was snickering on the ceiling.

"No, Dad, I can't see humans, remember? And there's a hybrid in the way right now too. Why can't they be visible like normal wolves? I've been pretty much blind since they got here. Why does Eliza have to have a sister?" he asked rhetorically. He did not like the hybrids, because they destroyed his vision.

"That's not nice, Scry. And Peter, humans aren't gonna just come back to die at your convenience. The risk of exposure is too great and just how're you planning on fighting the Volturi with a baby on each hip?" I asked.

"I was sorta hoping the Volturi wouldn't come for a while," Peter revealed.

"Well that's not gonna happen, not with Caius dead. Right now Aro's probably plotting his revenge and thinking about how he'll find us. It's easier to protect eggs than it is to protect babies."

"But what if Char and I don't survive this war?" he asked, letting his vulnerability show through.

"You will. And if you don't, Alice and I'll adopt your eggs. You have my word that your children will survive," I answered honestly, placing my hand on his shoulder and sharing my loyalty and determination.

"It's not fair- you and Alice already have four kids," Peter complained, but he was already acquiescing.

"Scryan and Ashley are almost nine hundred years old and Allison and Jackson are almost a thousand. I started this family eleven hundred years ago when we were in a time of peace. I never thought that they'd make it to adulthood before the war, but I've managed to get them to pre-teens. They're almost able to defend themselves and they're nowhere near as bad as a bunch of toddlers would be. I think my actions have been more than reasonable," I said, making Peter see it my way.

"You're right: if you couldn't make it halfway through without the Volturi after you then Char and I need to wait until after they've been dealt with to germinate our eggs. It's like those hybrids said, 'We wouldn't want our children growing up in a time like this,'" Peter replied, quoting Nahuel.

"That's the spirit. Now go find that wife of yours and try to enjoy it," I replied, pulling Peter into a man hug.

Peter left and a few hours later Allison and Alice came home. We went about our schedule as normal, which meant story time followed by art time in the dining room. It was a nice, peaceful night, until everyone stopped what they were doing when the visions hit.

"Boys, Girls, or one of each?" I asked Alice as soon as she came back to me; Scryan was still off in his vision for a few seconds more.

"One of each. Both with pale blond hair," Alice said starting the sketch of my niece and nephew.

"What'll their names be?" Ashley asked curiously, looking up from her water colors.

"I can't tell sweety- they're being indecisive. Do you remember what Mommy said about indecision?" Alice asked Ashley.

"Indecision is the worst crime anyone can ever commit," Ashley replied cheerfully. Only the daughter and litter mate of a pair of psychics would ever give that answer. I was rather liberal with my wife and let her teach the children whatever she wanted.

"Peter'll wanna name them after his human siblings. He had a little brother and a little sister, but he can't remember their names," Scryan revealed. Unlike the other children, he had not been doing anything artistic; he had been reading a comic book.

"Well go on, 'Son: what were their names?" Allison asked, looking up at her brother, but not putting her oil paints down.

"Kynna and Jace," Jackson replied coming back to us from his vision and picking his charcoal back up.

"I was thinking they'd have more generic names, like Paul and Patty," I replied surprized.

"Nope, Peter was named after his grandfather, his older brother was the junior, and two other brothers who died in childhood were named after his two uncles. By the time his mother got to his youngest brother, she was out of names. There was a great great grandfather named Jason, but they always called him Jace, so his mother went with it," Jackson replied.

"What about Kynna?" Ashley asked. "Is it a family name too?"

"Not quite. His mother's best friend had a daughter named Kynna. She died in a tragic accident when she was only three and Peter's mother decided to name her daughter after the other girl," Jackson answered, just as Alice put the last touches on her sketch of Kynna and Jace. The toddlers were beautiful and looked just like my brother and his wife.


	44. Chapter 42

Author's Note: This chapter was co-written by Master of the Boot.

* * *

Edward's POV:

The death of Caius marked the end of an era for vampires in general, but for Aro in particular. It said that our royal family was not quite so absolute and infallible. It meant the Volturi was weakened and it was because of us, the Cullens. We had defied the Volturi and hid outside of Demetri's reach. We had even plotted against the Volturi and allied ourselves with our mortal enemies, the werewolves. This was an insult Aro would not and could not forgive; not even if it had not been his closest and oldest friend who was dead. And so Aro was out for revenge.

Aro's revenge would start with finding us. His Guard had been looking for us the old fashioned way for a little over ninety years and had found nothing. The major reason for these failed attempts was that the Guard was out of practice finding people without a tracker, because even before they had Demetri, they had another tracker. Obviously they needed to search smarter not harder and Aro needed a new plan.

Now that Caius was dead, Aro put all of his mental resources into developing a fresh approach to finding us and to getting around Bella's shield. He did not have to read her mind to know how Bella's gift worked and that her shield was the key to our ability to hide from Demetri. From reading my mind he knew that despite her silent mind, Jasper and Alice's gifts still affected her. Aro had touched Alice's hand as well, so he knew everything about her, including how her visions worked and how she could use the future to find someone, i.e. how she found Jasper.

Aro had also deduced from his physical contact just exactly where Alice came from. She was in a mental institution when she was human, because she had had visions and was labelled crazy. A loony bin was always the perfect place to look for either a psychic or a psychotic. The ancient leader of the Volturi sent his Guard out to search every mental hospital the world over and not a single stone would be left unturned.

The effort put into the operation was not exactly meagre, considering Eleazar was with us and therefore unavailable to assist. But the Volturi had found another skill detector, George, and though he was not as practiced as Eleazar, he was still powerful enough to detect talented humans. George would search for a psychic for millennia if he had to.

But it did not take a millennium for George to find a psychic, because he found Mario after only a hundred years. Mario was a human in a mental institution in Mexico City, diagnosed with an untreatable form of epilepsy and psychotic delusions, because he thought he was a psychic blood sucker when he seized. Aro changed him and the Volturi also began to build up an army in preparation for a swift execution, because no one would be taken alive after the depth of our betrayal; not after he had lost Caius.

It would be another few years before Mario was ready to find us, because he would need to learn to focus and control his thirst and he would need to practice his skill in order to be able to interpret someone's location. It took Alice twenty-eight years to control her visions sufficiently to locate Jasper and it would take Mario even longer. But he would still find us, which we could not let happen.

When Scryan first saw the results of Aro' decision to send George to search Mario's institution, he had been at home with the rest of his family. He came out of his vision, told his family, and Major Whitlock snapped into action and making the first decision immediately. So just after Scryan saw Mario's conversion, the vision jumped.

We would strike pre-emptively and come down on the Volturi when Mario was alone. We would kill him and run. We would send a small group of fighters: one helicopter full.

Almost everyone wanted to go, especially the men, but it was decided that some of us were needed more here, to guard the rest of us. The names of the remaining volunteers were sorted through and debated upon for hours, to ensure that the best possible expedition party was created: David and Caroline, Huilen and Jose, Jason, and Liam would go.

Caroline had an evasive talent, which would help them get back out. She was a newborn when Alice led the Volturi on their wild goose chase and such a young vampire would never have been able to elude the Guard, evasive talent or no, because she would have come across a human, lost focus, and stopped to drink. And her talent was not practiced enough to be of any real use, but that was almost two hundred years ago. Now she was ready and her mate David refused to leave her. When she was chosen, he insisted on being included on the expedition.

Jose was a tracker, which would help them find Mario. He was not a very strong tracker, but useful still. Huilen refused to be separated, so she was allowed to go as well. Jason and Liam were chosen because they were strong fighters. If they were caught, our strike force would need a couple of fighters. We felt it was a good group for such a mission, because although it was small, it was deadly and suited to the task. Scryan and Alice both saw the plan working.

We huddled together in the living room of the main house to wait for news of how it was going. If it goes well, our friends should be able to call us on their cell phones, but Scryan and Alice were our primary source of information, and Masen was transferring a commentary directly from Scryan's head, to all the other minds in the room.

Just as the sun was setting, our friends' landed their helicopter outside Vienna, on the roof top of an abandoned building, not far from the Wien River. Jose used his tracking skill to locate Mario and his guardian, Bastien. Meanwhile Caroline used her evasive skill to keep the group out of sight. They stuck to swimming through the river as much as possible, to avoid detection from humans, as well as covering their scent trail.

They followed Bastien and Mario into the city, down a main street, across a side street, and down a back alley. They were clearly hunting humans this evening; looking for easy prey that no one would miss. A bum, a prostitute, a drug addict, or a runaway; anyone whose absence would not be reported. They located a likely alleyway with three snark addicts smoking snark; snark was a synthetic drug similar to heroin, but had none of the damaging side-effects, except for infertility. Bastien waited just long enough to ensure Mario had incapacitated all three humans before he left. Bastien did not like baby-sitting, thought Mario could handle it from here, and went north to find his own drink.

Bastien separating from Mario was the stroke of luck we had been waiting for, because Bastien was talented enough to defend Mario from our six insurgents single handedly. Bastien has an offensive talent similar to Jane's in that it causes pain. But unlike Jane, who tricks the mind into thinking it is in pain, Bastien actually produces real physical pain, because he is a bone breaker. He sends out ultrasonic vibrations that damage bones and he could crush every bone in the human body with just a thought; the aftermath of which resembled a fileted fish, wiggling around without bones.

Vampires were a little more resilient though, with only one bone snapping at a time. And our bones healed back almost instantly, stopping the pain short. But as long as Bastien kept breaking bones, his victim's pain would be guaranteed. Plus, it was difficult to walk and remain upright with two continually breaking legs, much less to fight and win. Fighting strategies when facing him would have to cover two points: evasion and distraction. Evade his ultrasonic attack, while distracting him from sending out more ultrasonic waves, because no one could evade him indefinitely. And he had been hand chosen as a human by Caius himself to join The Guard for one reason and one reason only, because Bella would not be immune to him.

Caius had found an excellent recruit for The Guard indeed, because breaking legs was just the beginning, as Bastien could be very deadly. He needed to be kept distracted on the battlefield otherwise he might shatter the skull, causing a vampire's brain to be left unprotected underneath the scalp, which was infinitely more problematic than a busted arm or leg. Fortunately his head shattering trick required intense concentration, so according to Alice, none of our assault party were due to have their heads crushed like grapes today.

Our party took the opportunity afforded by Bastien's absence and closed in. David and Jose struck like lightning and relieved Mario of his head, then his limbs, and then his second life came to an end; the others keeping watch in the event that this was nothing but an ambush. It would not be out of character for Aro to sacrifice a pawn to take down a group of pawns, but this was unlikely because Mario's abilities were crucial to Aro's plan.

Everything was fine until that moment, when it happened. Bastien became paranoid and changed his mind. He had been told to stay with Mario at all times. What if something happened to the brat? Aro would be furious, because Mario was essential to the end goal of finding the Cullens. So Bastien headed back to where he left Mario, cursing under his breath all the way.

Bastien found the fire burning, giving off a thick putrid sweet odour and knew immediately what had happened. He was enraged at our audacity to kill Mario and run, because a real vampire would stick around to fight or a real vampire would have attacked head on in the first place. But to kill and run was just plain wrong and he was absolutely livid. And more importantly, this might be a sign that the Cullens were in the area. If he could bring a Cullen back to his master, it would more than make up for losing Mario.

He located the trail left by our group and followed their scent. As he ran through the pitch black night, he whistled to the six other members of the Guard who were nearby. They were not close enough to hear screams, but high pitched whistles travel farther, and with excellent vampiric hearing, the others easily picked it up. We were lucky Mario had not remembered this important fact, giving our insurgents a head start in their retreat. But Bastien and the six other warriors were faster than the average vampire and quickly caught up to Mario's killers outside the abandoned high rise where the helicopter was parked.

We all recognized Felix's hulking form amongst the six other Volturi Guard members and I had seen Gaston and Tran in visions before. But we did not recognize the other three Guard members and I was sure they were new. I heard their names for the first time in Scryan's visions: Phoung, Ciro, and Ian.

A fight ensued. Bastien lit a fire as the seven Guard members cornered our friends, while Felix sent a boulder flying through the delicate blades of the helicopter, preventing our escape and ruining our renting helicopter. The fight was a maelstrom, with so many vampires moving so quickly that it was hard to follow.

Sometimes all I would catch was a severed foot or a finger flying past. But with our perfect memories, we had eternity to rewind and replay the scene in our heads until we were certain just who the body part belonged to. We were tough, talented, and dedicated, but the Volturi were hardened killers that smelled revenge and had real experience with this kind of slaughter. And we were outnumbered, seven to six.

Gaston was the first to strike and he was on Huilen, whose back was to Jose, like flies on dung. Taken by surprise, Huilen barely registered it as Gaston drove his fist right through her head, shattering her skull into little tiny granite pieces, which subsequently appeared to rain down to the ground in slow motion. Of course this did not really happen in slow motion, but the rest of the fight occurred so quickly that gravity seemed to act unusually slowly in comparison.

Like all vampires, Huilen's body kept functioning despite the egregious loss, because it was programmed to defend and reassemble. Her headless body struck out, tearing blindly at her attacker. Her left hand made contact with Gaston's left ear, while her right found his nose. The noise was deafening as the appendages were ripped from Gaston's face and thrown randomly. Without eyes, she missed the fire by a long shot, but still the act momentarily distracted her attacker and would force him to spend hours locating his pieces later.

It took Gaston ten pico seconds to recover from the loss of his nose and ear, but those precious pico seconds passed without Jose coming to Huilen's aid. While his sole mate was being attacked by Gaston, Jose was losing badly to Ian. Jose was holding his own against his opponent until he saw his mate's head shatter. He was so distracted by this that he failed to dodge a stray bone breaking blast from Bastien's fight across the courtyard. Jose's femur shattered and Ian was able to tear off an arm before Jose came back to the fight. And with only one arm, a broken leg, and faced with a superior attacker, his head was off and in the fire only moments after Huilen's headless attack upon Gaston's facial features.

And just like that, Huilen's brief chance at resurrection passed. Gaston quickly tore her arms from her body, letting them drop to the ground, before tossing her whole body into the fire to burn. And as Ian threw the last of Jose into the fire, Gaston retrieved Huilen's forelimbs from their resting place by his feet, where they were tearing at his shoes. He tossed them over his head into the fire as he moved on to the next fight, not even paying attention when his victim's right arm did not make it in, and started to crawl away.

Among the shadows running towards the water, Caroline was struggling to evade Phoung and Tran. Evidently they had realized immediately that she was the one to watch, although I still do not know how they knew she was talented. If it had just been one, then she would have gotten away to the safety of the water and swam home. But the two guardsmen slowed her retreat as they attempted to trap her between them.

Phoung and Tran were snapping and clawing at Caroline in much the same way that foxes go after a juicy rabbit. Every move she made to get passed Phoung, Tran was there to counter. Every dash away from Tran, Phoung was already waiting for. But with her evasive talent, she was ready for Phoung, tearing his head from his body as she continued to run towards the Wein River. She tossed the head over her shoulder with deadly accuracy as she dove into the water. Phoung's screams were cut short as his head was turned to ash in the fire.

But Felix was already heading downstream to cut off Caroline's escape. And Tran, furious over the loss of his friend, was right on her tail. I knew Caroline would not make it the first time Felix tore a finger from her hand: she had never lost a body part before and was caught off guard in a bad way, thrashing around in the water instead of continuing her escape. Tran did not give her time to recover before he grabbed what was left of her remaining forelimbs, restraining her drenched body in an inescapable hold, while still knee deep in water. Felix quickly grabbed her by the feet and pulled. Caroline's screams were drowned by the metallic ripping sound of her body being torn in half.

Felix dropped the useless lower half into the river where he stood, allowing Caroline's lower limbs to splash around aimlessly, because there was not a lot one could do with just a pair of legs and the lower half of the torso. Felix's hands were now free to severe the head, which he quickly tossed into the fire, although it took slightly longer than usual to burn, due to its soaking wet state. Tran threw the remainder of his half in after the head.

Caroline's lower half did not go into the fire, although they did retrieve it from the river's currents and tossed it to the side. I shuddered to think what they might do with her later. I tried to tune out Jasper's thoughts on the torture he knew was to follow, as he had spent too many years in the south to pretend he was not familiar with the procedure.

Meanwhile our best fighter, Liam, was taking on Bastien single handed. Liam and David had been double teaming Bastien, but David was so enraged by Caroline's loss that he left his fight with Bastien to seek revenge on Tran, as well as to throw the remains of his wife into the fire, because he was not about to let her be tortured later, and there was no saving her now. David scaled the neighbouring building, running vertically along the exterior wall, before jumping down on Tran's shoulders. Tran was taken by surprise and did not even have time to react before his head was turned to ash.

Gaston, being closest to David and the remains of Tran, stepped in before David could throw the rest of Tran into the fire. Not that they would be able to put Tran back together afterwards, but it was the principal of the matter. Gaston reached out and relieved David of his left ear, but David was far to enraged by the loss of his mate to care. He did not miss a beat as he tore Gaston's left hand from his wrist.

And as David fought with Gaston, Liam ducked and weaved as he tried to avoid the strange concussive blasts which preceded Bastien's bone breaking attacks. Five blocks away, a stray human caught the tail end of such a blast and had all of his ribs instantly powdered. Said human flopped to the ground and would have been in agony if it were not for the snark still rushing through his body.

Liam laughed psychotically as his ducking and weaving grew ever more desperate. "Missed me again!" he taunted as another blast flew past his elbow, hitting the brick wall of the building behind him, and leaving a small pin-prick sized hole. It almost looked as if a human had taken a drill to the brick.

But on the next blast, Liam was a hair too slow and his knee bone buckled like he had been kicked. He only just pushed off the ground in time to avoid his other kneecap being blown out.

"I'm gonna save your pieces when I finish with you, so I can put you back together and torture you. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be burned one milligram at a time?" Bastien asked before howling maniacally. "Starting with your-"

I cannot even repeat the end of that sentence. Masen was about to relay it to the others, but he heard my thoughts screaming out that that was enough, so he cut short. Though Eliza still heard it straight from the source, Scryan was the source, and Jackson insisted on watching it for himself after the fact, so four of our children were subject to the obscenities that followed.

"Starting with your what?" Lily asked, confused and wondering why the commentary had stopped.

"Starting with your fingers and then your toes. And then I am going to hurt you very badly," I filled in a more child friendly ending. But no one was deceived, so a round of groans rose up from the children as Masen continued his transferring of the scene.

Gaston thrashed, raved, and cursed as David tore chunks of flesh off of his back, hanging off the larger vampire like a lamprey. David was throwing Gaston into the fire in pieces; crystalized ribs, organs, chunks of muscle, sinew and stone vertebrae went into the fire that was now growing, having spread to the building that housed the remains of our helicopter. If the fire was not put out soon, the entire building along with all evidence of our vehicle would be lost. But that was fine by all of the vampires present, because it meant that there was less evidence to destroy later and the building was already damaged from the fight.

With signal cut off from his brain, Gaston's legs bucked blindly. Gaston however had the last laugh as his upper half lunged and threw himself and David into the fire together. The two continued to fight to the death in the fire, screaming like they were being burned alive, before finally crumbling into ash in the heat.

Things were looking bad for our side, because the best we could hope for was a pyrrhic victory. The Volturi fighter Ciro finished begging for his life when our man Jason took his head off after gouging out his eyes and puncturing his eardrums. The fight was bringing out the worst of our people and theirs.

Liam had closed the gap between him and Bastien. The formerly murderously merry guardsman was no longer laughing but had a look of intense hatred on his face. Bastien attempted to put a hand on Liam's neck to stop him, but ended up losing a few fingers in the process. Still, Bastien thrashed, kicked and bit like a rabid dog; he even snarled like a dog.

The fire was spreading. There was no more doubt about it, because the entire city block of abandoned office buildings and warehouses was going to go up in flames. The alley which had once stunk of urine and feces was now choked with the smell of burning vampire, like a perfume factory had been blown up by the Sudanese terrorists, which were for all intents and purposes the modern version of Al Qaeda.

The last surviving vampires were wounded and in pain. Felix, who had been double teaming Jason with Ian, was missing his lower jaw. His tongue flopped every which way as he threw strikes and avoided them. Jason was missing an arm and a foot but he fought bravely on. Ian's body was covered in massive gashes that even vampire regeneration would require minutes to heal.

But in that moment, Felix heard Bastien's screams and left Ian to help his old friend with the troublesome Liam. Ian was left to grapple with Jason alone, but did not think that this would be much of a fight, as he was the cause behind Jason's missing arm and foot. The wiry vampire grinned as he saw Jason take as much a misstep as perfectly graceful vampires are capable of making.

Ian threw himself in for the dismemberment. It was his intention to take Jason back in pieces as a trophy in order to claim some reward from Aro. Unfortunately for him that reward was never going to come. Jason had made a feint and now the killing stroke was his.

'Ian stopped in his tracks as Jason used his lone arm to grab his enemies by the-'

"Enough! I can't take this anymore!" I shouted, cutting Masen off from continuing to broadcast the obscene tale that continued in Scryan's head. "Jason hurt and then killed Ian. Let us please just leave it at that."

"Your father's right, we don't need to hear all the gory details Masen," Bella admonished, taking my side.

'If you insist,' Masen projected back, before continuing a more abridged version of events.

After Ian's defeat, Jason dodged falling debris from the burning building. One happy side effect from the fire was that it drove away the few homeless humans who had come to see the show. This not only helped keep the vampiric fight off of human radar, but it also prevented looky-loos from getting their blood drained. The only downside was that it was going to make the news the next day.

But alas, the fight was not in our favour. In that final moment, Bastien finally overwhelmed Liam and Felix attacked Jason. As Felix and Jason fought, Bastien prepared to unleash his skull crusher move. He raised his arms as every muscle in his body tensed and he ground his teeth hard enough to crack. The concussive blast that followed would have been strong enough to burst a human's eardrums. Liam's body collapsed as his body struggled to repair the powered skull fragments, while his brain was dangerously vulnerable, just under the scalp. Bastien did not even bother to tear Liam into pieces before he tossed the unconscious body of his opponent into the ever spreading fire.

The sound of Liam's skull degeneration was similar to that of boulders being crushed. Jason and Felix both went down temporarily, incapacitated by the sound alone. In the pico seconds that it took them to recover from the deafening noise, Bastien had Jason's head off and in the hood of his cape, as a macabre trophy of sorts. Felix then quickly helped dismember the remains of Jason into neat and tidy chunks, before tucking them gently under his arm for safe keeping.

The two winners, or more appropriately, survivors, then sorted through the wreckage, looking for Felix's jaw and Bastien's missing fingers. As they went, they threw all of the remains of the less fortunate, including Huilen's skull chunks and right arm, into the fire. They only managed to find Felix's jaw and one of Bastien's fingers, so Bastien would have to return without the index finger on his left hand.

In the end, it took them an hour to clean up the scene so that as little evidence would be left in their wake as possible and the humans would never be able to piece back together what had happened there. Felix and Bastien would return alive to report to their masters, with Jason's pieces as a trophy. Bastien would suffer punishment for losing the Volturi's psychic, but he would live because Aro would be more than appeased by his new play thing: Jason. It would only take one touch from Aro for him to know every thought Jason had ever had. Thoughts like where the Cullens were hiding.

Now Aro knows where we are and we can hide no longer. The Guard had been growing and now they were coming for us. They were all coming, even the wives and one thing was certain: our survival was not guaranteed.


	45. Chapter 43

Edward's POV:

The Guard had killed Huilen, Jose, Liam, Caroline, and David in battle. Jason was taken back to Volterra, in pieces, before being reassembled and touched by Aro, and then sentenced to death. He was relieved of his head, again, and burned. We were all bereaved by the loss of our friends and family, but the Irish, Amazonian, hybrid, and Denali covens were especially devastated.

"I promised my brother that I would take care of his eggs if anything happened to him," Sean told Maggie in the aftermath of David and Caroline's deaths, because they had a pair of eggs left in storage. Sean was beside himself with grief.

"Of course," Maggie replied, agreeing to adopt the orphaned eggs. She too was devastated; almost as much as Siobhan and Tanya.

"First they took my mother, which I understood," Tanya said, starting the cry for vengeance and speaking for Siobhan as well. "But then they murdered my sister and I looked the other way. Now they destroyed my mate, and I shall remain silent no longer. The Volturi must go and I will see them to their graves, if it's the last thing I do."

The pair of widows wanted revenge and it was all we could do to keep them on the island and to keep them from storming Volterra. We told them to wait until the Volturi comes here, and then they would get their vengeance. They were more likely to do some damage in a group and we could use their help, so once the fight breaks out they could do their best to get themselves killed avenging their mates, if that was what they really wanted. Although, none of us could bear to think about what they were planning, because we loved them too much.

The Volturi approached our island from all sides. They brought more vampires than were ever known to be in their Guard, over a hundred, but we were ready for them. Jasper had chosen our island specifically because he thought it would be the easiest one in the area to defend. It was surrounded by steep cliffs on three sides and a thin glacial shelf on the north, so it was nearly impenetrable to humans. But we were not dealing with humans.

Vampires could scale these cliffs with ease and we are not bothered by the frigid cold waters that would have to be swum through. Not even the fragile ice shelf would be a danger to our kind, not with our ability to hold our breath indefinitely and our super strength to break through the ice, not to mention our resistance to hypothermia. But even if these features would not keep the Volturi out, the shape of the island did lend easily to defense and Allison had spent hundreds of years fortifying our defenses just for this occasion.

There is not much that can stop a vampire, but we do have one fatal downfall in our susceptibility to fire. We are highly flammable and even sitting too close to a fireplace for a long period of time can be dangerous, because sparks can jump and the flammability of our venom only increases with heat. We always have to be exceedingly careful when dealing with open flames, which was the reason Aro donated money to Thomas Edison's research on electricity. Thanks to a few ingenious human inventions, the utility and prevalence of the open flame had decreased drastically, making the world a safer place for vampires.

Allison had decided to use our one true enemy, the flame, to defend our borders. Almost a thousand years ago, back when she was just a toddler, she had instructed us on how to set up a propane fueled ring of fire around the perimeter of the inhabited portion of the island. The original ring was a perfect circle surrounding our houses and it only shot flames twenty feet up into the air. We could jump that, plus there were imperfections in the ring design so that there were small gaps in between the bars of flame, and although there was no doubt that it was an impressive impediment to any invasion, it certainly was not the end all in defense.

Over the years Allison perfected the design and learned how to draw blueprints, so that the second ring was much more impressive. Five hundred years ago we built the second ring outside the first. It was quite a bit larger than the first, encompassing the majority of the island, and so it was forced to take on a bit of the pear-shape of the island. These flames were continuous the entire way around the circuit and spewed thirty feet into the air. Thirty feet was pushing the limits of vampire abilities, but the best jumpers could still manage it with the wind in their favor.

The second firewall was still not one hundred percent impenetrable, so a third firewall was constructed. We started construction two hundred years ago, before the death of Amun, so it was finished in plenty of time to defend us from the Volturi. Firewall gamma, as it was called, was the largest of the walls by far, hugging the perimeter of the island as tightly as possible. It had all of the improvements of the second wall, but now the flames shot forty feet into the air, well beyond the reach of any known vampire. Not even Adriel could jump that high.

And so when the Volturi came, we turned on the rings of fire. The first ring was now so old that it was in disrepair, but the second and third rings worked perfectly. The Guard scaled our cliffs en mass, just to turn back, thwarted by the flames. They stormed the beach, breaking up the thin ice shelf as they went, only to find the ring could not be crossed. The wall of fire was too thick and too high for a flammable vampire to cross and the mechanism was secured behind a foot of flame.

They gathered along the northern shore and tried to jump the fire. Their fastest and most agile warriors launched themselves into the sky, but none could jump high enough. The first jumper missed by a long shot, flying through the fire and landing on the other side, burning. We did not even have to intervene, because the fire took care of the remains in a flash. The second jumper almost made it, just barely dragging his foot through the fire. He went up in a blaze so bright we had to shield our eyes. The third tried to barge through at ground level, trying to sacrifice himself to disable part of the wall. But he missed the fire-producing mechanism, and so his pile of ash was enough of a deterrent to prevent anyone else from trying such an idea. No one thought of trying fire-proofing compounds, nor did they waste their time trying to tunnel through the ground.

While the warriors were destroying themselves in their vain attempt to gain access to our island, the rest of us waited with baited breath, anticipating the fight that was to come. Carlisle called a family meeting and kept pacing back and forth as we each racked our brains for a peaceful solution to this problem. When none could be found, Carlisle insisted that we could no longer justify the keeping of our secret from the Volturi. We would be dead, and soon, if we did not tell them. We had to try to explain and so Carlisle called Aro, for a second time.

'Ah, Carlisle, what an honor it is that you would deem to call me!' I heard Aro's voice in Carlisle's mind.

"Are you still in Volterra then?" Carlisle asked. "I was worried that I wouldn't be able to reach you at this number.

'I succumbed to human technology ages ago- I had to because they don't make land lines anymore- this number is my cell number now. You need not worry, I'm nearby. My guard has been trying to get into your little island, but no matter, we will keep trying.'

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. We don't want to fight. We've decided to share with you the information we've been withholding and the reason why we refused to touch your hand before."

'You have my undivided attention, Carlisle, go on.'

"My son didn't reproduce with a human. His biological child isn't a hybrid; she's a full vampiric child."

'You have an immortal child?'

"No. This child grows, but slowly and she was never human. She's the natural offspring of my son and daughter."

'That is impossible. We must bite to make more of our kind.'

"That's what we thought too, until my son vomited up his first gall stone. My daughter, the psychic, saw it and knew immediately that she was an egg."

'You insult my intelligence Carlisle. Vampires do _not_ lay eggs. This conversation is over!' Aro said hanging up.

"At least you tried," Esme said, trying to comfort her husband, as Carlisle's face crumpled up in despair.

And so we were left with no other options, but to wait and see how long we could hold off the Volturi. They could not get through the firewalls, but neither could we get supplies in from the outside. We had stockpiled enough hybrid food and blood that we could hold out for years, but the firewalls required propane to burn and we would run out of that before anything else. Sure we had stockpiles of propane too, as much as we could get, and we even had a newly built warehouse full of nothing but giant propane tanks, but it would only last so long.

After Carlisle's conversation with Aro it was apparent that we were in this confrontation for the long haul and so it was decided that we would turn off the middle firewall to conserve the propane for the outer wall. But even with only the one ring burning, it took a lot of fuel to keep the flames forty feet in the air and at least a foot thick, night and day. After two months the inevitable was staring us in the face, because we were down to the last of our propane.

During those two months the Volturi maintained a constant presence along the northern shore of our island, so that our movements were constantly being watched. But watching and spying on us through the flames only took a few vampires and the rest moved west to Walrus Island after only two days. They took shifts to alternate who was on guard duty, so that vampires were always coming and going back and forth between the two neighboring islands.

Alice never could see where Aro, Marcus, and the wives were, because they seemed to have the hybrid Leczy with them, which was why we had not been positive that Aro was even in the area. But once his presence was confirmed, Alice was able to locate a blind-spot on Walrus Island. She could not confirm his current or future location on the island, but Jackson's talent was much more useful in spying on Aro.

Jackson can see all creatures as long as he is looking for something that already happened. He was able to produce detailed drawings and valuable information regarding the Volturi's activities in the area. He could see that Aro and Marcus spent most of their time inside a large tent with the two wives. Caius' wife Athenodora was still inconsolable with grief over the recent loss of her mate, but so was Marcus with Didyme's murder over four thousand years ago. He had never gotten over losing his mate, but at least now he had a friend in Athenodora who knew exactly how he felt.

Jackson also saw that the senior members of the guard always stayed on Walrus Island, so that the family would be protected. Felix, Jane, Alec, Leczy, Bastein, Heidi, Corin, Demetri, Chelsea, and Afton shared security details on Walrus Island, which meant it would be harder for us to get to them. It was only the lesser Guard members who stood firm on our shore, waiting for us.

All of that waiting made the vampires very thirsty, so they would travel to the nearby Inuit villages to drink. When the villages were decimated, they went farther into Canada to quench their thirst. They would of course alternate their trips between themselves, so that there was always a strong enough presence to attack us at any moment.

It was hard for us all to sit back and watch the Guard prey upon the nearby villages; villagers that were once our friends and our hosts. We had befriended these people, treated their injuries, and cared for their sick and now they were gone and not just from old age. The epidemic even reached the humans' attention and the loss of whole Inuit tribes was blamed on the deadly New Ebola virus, while the population slump in Canadian cities was blamed on drugs, namely Snark. The humans began to restrict travel to and from Canada for fear of a pandemic if the disease and drug use were to spread.

We could not bear for the glutinous murders to continue so close to our home and so the pressure to hurry up and end this war grew. By the time two months had passed, the last of the villages within a thirty mile radius had been completely abandoned; although how many of them were killed and how many had relocated out of fear, we did not know. I was hoping for the latter, but fearing the worst. And even if we were not faced with the human population problem, we still were running out of time, because of the propane shortage.

With only days left of protection from the Volturi, we were faced with a very difficult decision. We could either call in our human suppliers to helicopter in more propane, or we could fight. There were three major problems with the first option, including that it was not really solving our problem to wait, but just delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later we would have to deal with the Volturi, because they were not going away and letting them stay just led to human casualties.

The second issue with helicoptering in more supplies was the humans that would have to fly the helicopters, because they were bound to notice the vampires at our doorstep and the giant forty foot high firewall. We still had to obey the number one law and keep the secret, even if we were openly opposing the enforcers of that law. Even if the Volturi were no more, keeping the secret was still important to us all and we did not want to risk it. And bringing in the humans risked their lives, because the Volturi could always track them down for questioning after they left the island.

But the biggest issue with bringing in supplies was the future that course of action would lead to. Scryan could not see the helicopters, because of the human pilots, but he could see Aro deciding to purchase a dozen helicopters for his Guard. If Aro ever figured out that helicopters and other human flying devices were capable of flying over our firewall unharmed, then it would all be over, because we could not block out the sky with fire.

And so it was decided that we could wait no longer and we would attack. We would throw the first blow. We put together another attack party, but this time it was assumed that this would be a suicide mission. Some of us were going to willingly sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole. Well Tanya and Siobhan just wanted revenge for the deaths of their mates, but Enrique, Josue, and Benjamin signed up with heroism in their hearts. They all had eggs in storage and they wanted to do everything they could possibly do to ensure that their mates would survive long enough to see their eggs hatch.

And so the group of five kamikaze fighters snuck out the southern tunnel and split up to pick off as many members of the Guard as possible. They stole away to the north of our island, where many of our enemies were located. They went looking for unsuspecting vampires who were either alone or nearly alone and attacked, before bringing the pieces back into the cave inside the southern tunnel, so that the pieces could be dealt with later. We dared not start those fires now, because we did not want to alert Aro to the fact that five Cullens had left the island.

While Tanya and Siobhan were exacting their revenge, Jasper, Emmett, and I were securing the southern tunnel itself. It was the only way through the firewall, because it was under the wall, with one opening within our sanctuary, and the other opening fifty feet under the ocean surface. If it were discovered, the Volturi would be able to use it to gain access to us. Both Scryan and Alice had warned that this was highly probable since the Kamikazes were now traveling back and forth.

Emmett was working down in the ocean end of the tunnel, while I had the middle, and Jasper had the cave on the island side. Jasper of course had Ashley with him, because she was always with him now that we were at war, so he had the easy part. He and Ashley were using large fire hoses to pump ethanol and gasoline into the cave and force out the water. The gasoline was originally purchased for the race cars, while the ethanol was for a lighted projectile project Allison had been working on for our defense. Allison still wanted the ethanol, but all of it and all of the gasoline was being repurposed.

And while Ashley and Jasper worked, the water surrounding Emmett and I slowly became polluted with the flammable chemicals. The difference in viscosity did not bother us and we kept working, digging crevices and laying explosives every fifteen feet. I worked at a rapid pace, covering three fourths of the length of the tunnel in the time that it took Emmett to cover his fourth.

Emmett's work was slower and more difficult because the Kamikaze's kept bringing him heads he had to pass through the tunnel. We had originally planned to transport the pieces all of the way up through the cave, but it was too narrow for someone to pass Emmett while he worked, so Siobhan expanded the opening on the ocean side in order to create enough room to dump the body parts. But there was always the worry that the victims would try to reassemble themselves while we worked, so Siobhan was passing Emmett up the heads, to separate them from the bodies.

When we started this mission, I had hoped that our friends would all survive and that they would all be able to make the journey back up the tunnel before we set off the explosives. But as I worked, I heard first Tanya, and then Benjamin, Enrique, and Josue lose their battles with the Guard. At first the Guard had been unsuspecting and had fallen without a fight, but then Tanya, in her rashness to seek revenge, had been caught and made our enemy aware of our presence.

I could hear the thoughts of the Guard getting closer and closer, and by the time Josue had been picked off at the ocean's surface right above the tunnel, I knew we could not wait any longer. I knocked on the rock wall of the tunnel, signaling to Emmett and Siobhan that it was time to come back in. Emmett still had a few crevices he was supposed to dig and explosives that had not been laid, but as soon as he heard my signal, he abandoned the explosives at the opening Siobhan had dug. She had been about to go after Josue's attacker, but then she changed her mind and let Emmett lead her back into the tunnel and up to safety.

Jasper and Ashley were already retreating back to the safety of the main house when Emmett and Siobhan returned. I clapped my brother on the back and silently thanked him for saving Siobhan, while Siobhan made a run for the wireless remote control for the explosives.

"No, not yet," I ordered, turning to the grieving widow, knowing that she wanted nothing more than to pull the switch that would forever end the second lives of all of the victims whose bodies currently layed in pieces down below.

She turned and hissed at me, thinking only of her vengeance. "Wait until Muhammad goes for help. He'll bring the others and we can set off the explosion when the tunnel is filled with Volturi," I said, flipping the switch to the oxygen pump that pumped pure oxygen into the hose. Emmett had laid the hose throughout the tunnel, because a real explosion requires plenty of oxygen to ignite. The hose was dotted with holes along its length that would release the crucial gas throughout the tunnel.

"Of course, you're right," Siobhan said smiling sadistically as she thought of the damage that would be done and the lives that would be lost. "Just as long as I can still pull the trigger."

"Of course, but we need to get to the surface, because this cave's gonna blow," Emmett said making wild gestures with his arms to mimic the explosion he was all too eager to witness. He may be a father now and have three little girls who depended on him, but he still loved a good fight and a good explosion.

And with that Siobhan nodded and the three of us took off running towards the surface. We had only just made it out into the open when I heard the first thoughts enter the tunnel. I waited until the tunnel was packed with vampires and the first were just emerging from the gasoline and ethanol mixture, before signaling to Siobhan to go ahead and flip the switch on the control she still clutched in her hands.

A deafening roar erupted from deep within the ground and a huge fireball shot up out of the cave and into the sky. The cliff started to crumble and large pieces of rock broke off the cliff and tumbled into the ocean. The fireball evaporated leaving only smoke rising up from the opening, while bubbles and debris rose up from the ocean depths. The water had turned a flash of fiery orange, before taking on a polluted grey tint in addition to its normal frigid dark blue color.

For a moment I thought that this side of the island might cave in and collapse inward, but although the island shook and the rock groaned, it held steady. The explosion was contained within the cave and not even the firewall was damaged.

"That was freaking awesome!" Emmett proclaimed, filling the silence that was left in the wake of the explosion with his booming voice.

A loud cheer erupted from the direction of the main house as Emmett, Siobhan, and I ran back to be greeted as the heroes of the day. "How many did we get?" Jasper asked as we approached. He was standing at the doorway to the main house with Ashley on his back. Allison, Jackson, Scryan, and Alice were all crowded around him, blocking the door, but I could see almost everyone else just inside the house itching to get out. Most were hoping that the psychics were wrong and that there was still a piece of action left to be had, but the rest were wishing that the psychics were correct and that they were safe.

"The Kamikazes got nineteen of them and we only lost four," Emmett said, having counted the heads that had been passed up to him.

"There were another twenty-four Guard members in the cave and tunnel when the explosion went off," I revealed.

"Forty-three! We got forty-three of them!" Emmett shouted, causing another round of cheers to go up. A celebration ensued, but it was short lived. Tanya had wanted to die, because she could not bear to live without her mate, but we still missed her all the same. And Benjamin, Josue, and Enrique had all left mates behind that were absolutely devastated.

Tia, Senna, and Kachiri were standing in the yard off to the side of the house, obviously keeping their distance from Ashley as Jasper had warned, because they were filled with mixed emotions. They were emanating grief, sorrow, anger, and hatred, but also the desire for revenge. The two giant Amazonian sisters were both agreed that they would take point at the next battle, already wishing to die. Tia was a little more reluctant to fight, knowing that Benjamin had wanted her to live for a reason, but her mind was still filled with thoughts of ripping Aro and Marcus limb from limb for what they had set in motion.

And although we had taken out a significant portion of our enemy, the firewall was still running dangerously low and the remainder of the Volturi was still camped just a few miles away on Walrus Island. Every Guard member who had been on guard on our northern shore had succumbed to our Kamikazes and they had been in the middle of a guard-shift, so that was more than usual. The only one who survived had gone for help and then most of those who had responded to the emergency had been in the tunnel or the cave when it exploded, but three had been just outside the blast range and had survived.

The three survivors had already gone back to Walrus Island and again returned with additional reinforcements. The remainder of the Guard, except for a few members left to protect the ruling family of four, was now converging on our island. They had lost forty-three members and ten had stayed back, but there were still thirty-nine furious vampires clamoring along our boarders trying to find a way in.

We all watched and waited to see what would happen. A few more Guard members sacrificed themselves to our firewall as they tried to jump over it and another died when he tried to dig under it. Allison had designed the fire wall so that the propane spewed out in three directions, up, out, and down, and the only thing stopping the wall from extending down was the rock. Once the rock was chipped away by the vampire trying to dig under it, the propane was redirected and the vampire was burnt to a crisp.

"I say we organize another war party and attack again!" Peter proclaimed, fearing that our firewall would fall and that Charlotte and his eggs would be destroyed.

"Brother, we can't do that," Jasper said going to him. "Now that the cave's been destroyed there's no way for us to leave the island without turning off the firewall or calling in helicopters."

Many of us had been eager to follow Peter into battle, but their hopes were dashed with Jasper's words. Not only had we sealed ourselves off from the world, but we had barred ourselves in as well. The tunnel was completely collapsed and there was no way through.

"It doesn't matter anyway: I already called the humans to bring us more propane and ethanol. I can't believe you just confiscated all of my supplies!" Allison exclaimed. "They'll be here in a few more hours and then the Volturi will know our weakness."

"Once Aro knows he'll pull his Guard out. They'll go back to Volterra to regroup. We'll have at least a month to plan our defense, before they come back," Scryan added.

"And then we fight!" Jasper announced and Ashley cringed, ducking her head down into the crook of her father's neck.


	46. Chapter 44

Reminder: Arie is Carl's nickname for Angel Rose.

* * *

Carl's POV:

It sucks to be a kid. All the adults are outside fighting for our lives, while we have to sit inside waiting for our deaths, because the Volturi are back, again. It took them six months to come back, because they had to recruit more vampires to fill in their ranks and because they had to get enough helicopters. But now that they had, I was looking forward to seeing a kick-ass battle first hand, if only the grown-ups would let us watch.

Almost everyone was either out on the lawn or in the school house preparing for battle. And by that I mean everyone except us kids, because we were stuck in the first floor living room of my house, being guarded by my mom and dad. My parents were pretty cool most of the time, but they were being uber lame on this matter, because they would not let us fight. They said that children could not fight, because we were too slow and weak. Adult vampires are faster and stronger and we would not be their equals until we were fully mature, so instead of helping, we were forced to sit and wait.

And while we waited, we were bored out of our minds, because there was absolutely nothing to do. Jackson and Scryan were entertaining themselves with their visions and Eliza and Masen could eavesdrop on said visions, but there was nothing for the rest of us to do. Masen had been transferring a verbal running commentary from Scryan to the rest of us, but even that had stopped, because of Ashley.

Ashley and her dad, Uncle Jasper, were sitting on the far couch in the back of the room and she was in pain. The emotions of preparing for war were too much for her, so my uncle was trying to lay on the calm extra thick. If the calm was any stronger we would all be passed out cold; I know, because he has done it before when we were all being bad at school. It was so calm it was painful and if I had to endure one more minute of it I think my head would explode, especially with all the peace my litter mate was extruding.

My brother Aiden does not like violence or fighting and the idea of going to war greatly unnerves him. Plus he was best friends with Ashley, so he was doing everything he could to make the room peaceful for her. He would have been on the couch trying to comfort her too, but he had been shoed away, so he was currently sitting on the floor behind the couch, conjuring up more peace.

"I can't take all of this peace and calm," I whispered into Arie's ear, so softly that only she would hear. Her golden curls tickled my lips as I whispered, but I was too calm and peaceful to laugh. Arie was my best friend and we were huddled together, waiting to see what would happen.

"Let's go upstairs," she whispered back.

My parents, brothers, and I lived on the third floor of the main house, while we were currently camped out on the first floor. There was another living room on the third floor that we could use and it had the advantage of being away from Ashley and Aiden, as well as having a window that over-looked the front of the house. I was sure my parents would not object to a trip upstairs, so I nodded and asked, "Mom, can Arie and I go upstairs?"

"Sure sweetie, as long as you don't go outside," Mom replied.

"Don't open any of the windows, just in case," Dad added.

"Let's go," Arie said, pulling my hand, before I could even finish nodding to my parents.

We quickly ran up the stairs to the other living room, where we kneeled in front of the large window to watch. I knew instantly that the first helicopter had already arrived and been dealt with, because there was a flaming ball of helicopter on the edge of the northern side of the field. The tall lean figures of the Amazonians could be seen retreating from the wreck. They fell back into rank, standing alert and ready to fight.

All of our allies were out there, on the field, waiting for the battle to break out. The Denalis, Amazonians, Romanians, Irish, and hybrid covens were all there, along with all of the nomads. Even the sole living member of the Egyptian and English covens, Tia and Sean, were there. The only one missing was Alistair, who was hiding up in our attic. All in all, we had twenty-two vampire and eight hybrid warriors out there ready to fight when the armada of helicopters flew in.

I counted eight helicopters in total and the enemy could be seen dropping down from the sky onto the battlefield. Our warriors began fighting instantly and the field was utter chaos with the confusion of battle. The nomads in the north eastern corner seemed to be getting hit the hardest. A huge hulking vampire along with three smaller ones jumped out of a helicopter that was hovering overhead and tore a hole right through our line. I watched as Mary, Macy, Charles, and Makenna were torn apart and thrown into the fire. It was Peter who finally stopped him, but the damage was already done.

Fires were burning all around the battlefield, because of Allison's lighted incineratory projectiles. The projectiles released lots of ethanol when it struck its target, which was ignited by the fire. My aunts and uncles, except for Uncle Jasper, were firing them at the helicopters from the relative safety of the school house. Because they were Allison's idea and design, she was with them; she was the only one of us kids allowed to help in the defense, but even she was forced to stay inside surrounded by adults.

Arie and I watched as the incineratory projectiles hit the helicopters and exploded. All of the helicopters crashed to the ground, or caught fire and then crashed to the ground, or exploded and the pieces crashed to the ground. So not only were the ground fighters having to deal with the enemy, but also they were ducking and dodging stray incineratory projections, fires, and falling helicopter debris. It was a mess.

"It's a mess out there. Who do you think's winning?" I asked Arie as we watched the battle scene unfold. My voice was a soft whisper in her ear, because I did not want anyone downstairs to overhear our conversation. We were used to dealing with eavesdropping and my voice was just low enough that no one on the first floor would hear. We knew how quiet we had to be, because we had studiously tested the limits of sound travel in this house.

"I think they are winning. Senna, Kachiri, and Tia are all dead. I saw them storm a helicopter over there in the west. A bunch of Volturi came out and I think one of them was Bastien, because those three kept falling down when they were fighting. They got his head into the fire, but they were already surrounded. What about you? Did you see anyone die?"

"Yeah, I saw a bunch of nomads. I think it might've been Felix who did it, because it was a really big guy, but Peter killed him."

"And this is only the first wave of helicopters. There's no telling how many'll die with the next round," she said.

"How do you know there's gonna be a next round? Don't you think that's all of the helicopters?"

"Scryan said he saw ten helicopters in Volterra."

"But he only said he saw nine take off," I countered.

"That's 'cause their hybrid must be in that one, but either way you put it, there're still two helicopters missing, because I only saw eight."

"I count nine, not eight."

"I saw eight come in and eight went down."

"What about that crumpled one over there?" I asked pointing to the first helicopter that had fallen before the fighting started.

"Oh, I didn't see that one. I thought it was just a big fire, but now that it's died down, I can see the black metal… Well that's still one short… Where's the tenth 'copter?" she asked and I just shrugged, because I did not have an answer for her. "Well I overheard Scryan say that our future goes away after the ninth helicopter crashes and he couldn't see how it was gonna end. I think the future goes away because their hybrid is on that tenth helicopter and we all disappear as soon as she gets here."

"So, what do you want to do about it?"

"I want to fight."

"Why? You heard what my mom said. We can't help, because we're too weak and you'll get hurt."

"I will _not_. I've got my venom burn and I can take care of myself." She was not one of the best fighters in our wrestling class, but with her venom burn, no one could bare to hold her.

"We can't go. My Mom and Dad'll stop us," I quietly reminded her.

"We can sneak out."

"How? They'll hear us." I became more serious as I realized how determined she was.

"Not if we go out your window."

"Dad said not to open any windows. He'll hear."

"Ashley sneaks in your window all the time and no one ever hears her," she said. As Aiden's best friend, Ashley sneaks in here almost once a day, so the window was regularly oiled to prevent creaking. It really was silent, so Arie had me there. I had even snuck out a few times before myself, in order to meet up with Arie when I was grounded.

"But it's dangerous and I don't want to lose you. I can't lose you," I pleaded.

"Then come with me."

"We're gonna get in major trouble."

"Who cares?"

"I do. My dad's gonna be disappointed in me. We'll be grounded for a year," I tried to reason with her.

"Daddy's boy's a chicken."

"Please? Can't we stay here? For me?" I gave her my best puppy dog eyes.

"You can stay, but I'm going."

"No way. Where ever you go, I go." I could not imagine my life without my Arie and I would do anything to protect her. My healing power would protect her, because if she were injured in the battle, I could heal her, allowing us to flee. There was no way I could let her go without me.

"Then what are we waiting for?" she asked before jumping up, running to my room, and heading to the window. She silently opened it, just half a foot, and climbed out. I followed after her, and closed it once I was through. We climbed down the siding of the rear of the house, because my window over-looked the backyard and the fight was in the front, so no one should notice us. Using my window was really ingenious of Arie, because we would have gotten caught for sure if we had tried to sneak out the living room window, because that window was in the front and the adults would have seen us and stopped us.

Once we were down, we crept around the house, taking care to avoid Allison's cameras. At one point, we climbed twenty feet back up the siding of the house, to avoid a camera. We knew from experience exactly where the blind spots were, because my parents used the cameras to monitor our behavior. Getting caught annoyed Ashley, so Allison showed her sister how to get around the cameras and I had weaseled the secret out of Aiden long ago.

We climbed back down the siding, running onto the field in front of the house. We could see the werewolves and half vampires guarding the front of the house, but they were further west. Hopefully, they would not notice us, because if we were caught, we would be forced back inside to wait. We probably would not even be allowed to watch.

We were on the south eastern edge of the field when we saw the missing tenth helicopter fly in and two vampires jumped from their helicopter, which was still fifty feet in the air. Just then, an explosion rocked the helicopter, setting it alight. Another explosion lit up the sky as the two vampires hit the ground running.

They were running straight for the house when their helicopter crashed in a torrent of flames behind them and since Arie and I were between them and the house, they were running straight for us. I recognized one of them, because she stood out like a sore thumb, or more accurately like a hybrid among vampires. Arie had been right and Leczy, the Volturi hybrid, was on this helicopter.

I was absolutely certain that this was Leczy, because she looked like the other hybrids and she had olive colored skin, and I was not about to let her hurt my Arie. I charged at her, planning on flipping her over onto her back and removing her head, just like Uncle Jasper taught us, while Arie went after a smaller female vampire. But, fighting Leczy really was like fighting Uncle Jasper, because she anticipated my attack, countered it, and had me in a head lock before I knew what happened. And for some reason, I no longer wanted to fight her; it was as if she had my uncle's empathy and was making me docile.

That was when I heard the most horrid sound imaginable: the sound of granite being ripped in two. I turned to look just as Arie's head flew into the fire. Her attacker was covered in painful red burns and smoke was emanating from where she was still in contact with Arie's body, but without her head, I knew Arie would never recover. I tried to free myself, to dive into the flames after her, but I could not, because Leczy's grip was too sure and too tight. And then I heard another rip echo across the land and the ground was tumbling over my head. I heard howls roar and tear through the air, but I was too far gone to care. I saw flames and smoke and my last thoughts were that I was getting my wish to join Arie in the fire. If I could not live with her, then at least I could die with her.


	47. Chapter 45

Edward's POV:

Even though we won the helicopter battle, it was devastating to us, because of the loss of so many of our loved ones. Mary, Macy, Charles, Makenna, Tia, Senna, and Kachiri had all died at the hands of the Volturi Guard, but what was even worse was that Carmen had died at my own hands. I was with Bella, Allison, Alice, Rosalie, and Emmett firing lighted incineratory projectiles at the helicopters when one of the projectiles I launched caused Carmen's death.

Like all vampires, I had perfect aim and my shot would have landed on target and hit that helicopter square if everyone would have stayed put. I even anticipated the movement of the helicopter, so that my shot still made its mark, but there was no way I could have predicted Carmen's movements and Alice had not seen what happened until it was too late. Carmen's split second decision cost her her life.

This particular helicopter was flying rather low already, because it had taken fire already and so was sagging under the pressure of the impending inferno. The tail was on fire and it would have crashed soon anyway, but I was hoping to get a projectile into the passenger compartment, so that no one would be able to jump to the ground and escape to cause more havoc. But the helicopter had been flying so low and a Guard member had been seen preparing to jump, so Carmen had decided to jump up onto the helicopter to prevent the enemy from coming out.

Carmen might have been able to destroy her enemy and get back out of the aircraft before it was fully engulf by the fire, but we will never know for sure what would have happened. Instead what did happen was that she jumped onto the helicopter and was clinging to the open door when my lighted incineratory entered the compartment. It must have struck something flammable, because the helicopter exploded and Carmen was killed, leaving Eleazar a widower.

I blamed myself for Carmen's death and I apologized profusely to Eleazar, but I knew he would never get over the loss and that was not even the worst of the battle. One helicopter slipped through our defense, because the Volturi hybrid was on board. Leczy thwarted Alice and Scryan's visions just by her presence and so we did not know exactly where or when it would land. We did not have much detail on the other crafts either, but we were completely in the dark with regards to Leczy.

Everyone was told to be on the lookout for the hybrid as we knew she was coming, because Alice could not see the end of the battle, ever. Scryan had trouble seeing because of the presence of our own hybrids, but with our hybrids agreeing to stay within their sector at all costs, Alice's sight had partially returned. Before this decision was made Alice could not see anything about the battle at all, but afterwards she could see the majority of the fighting. But what Alice did not foresee was that Carl and Rosita would be out there on the battlefield. They were close to the hybrids, because the hybrids were stationed in front of the door to the main house, so Alice never did see them.

Initially only two Volturi Guard members managed to jump out of that helicopter, but one of them was Leczy, who used her mind control to take down our children without a fight. Jacob's pack noticed the commotion and quickly stepped in to overtake the two Volturi, just as another two dropped from the helicopter. The hybrids were victorious in the end and Leczy and her fellow attackers were torn to shreds in the jaws of the wolves, but not before Embry and Maysun were killed.

We were all confused as to why Carl and Rosita had been out on the battlefield in the first place, because the children were supposed to be in the house. It was only later that we learned from Jackson's visions that they had snuck out. Esme and Carlisle had thought the children were safe upstairs in Carl's room, but Rosita wanted to help and Carl had followed her out.

In the end, twelve of us died to defeat the twenty-six of them that had landed on the ground and another thirty-four that never made it out of the helicopters. It was a time of mourning on our island and we were all emotionally devastated. Esme, Carlisle, Emmett, and Rosalie were all especially devastated to have lost a child. Esme had a mental breakdown, because this was her fourth child that she had lost; she counted the two eggs. Only time could heal her pain.

We defeated the Volturi, but at a cost, and they would be back. Sure the Guard had been decimated, but Aro, Marcus, Renata, Chelsea, Jane, Alec, Heidi, and Demetri were safe in Volterra; they could easily replace their lost Guard and send more vampires down upon us. They could attack us over and over and over again until there were none of us left to fight. Our numbers had already been decimated by their attack, so I knew we could not keep this war going for much longer.

The morning after the battle we were all in the yard debating what to do when two more Alice's materialized out of thin air! That was, these girls looked exactly like Alice and the only difference was that instead of Alice's short straight black hair, these girls had long wavy blond hair.

"Hi! We're Kair and Kare!" the identical twin Alices said in unison. I could hear in their thoughts that these were their nicknames and their full first names were Zakaira and Zikare. They were Alice and Jasper's twins named after the twin humans we were so fond of. Jasper will think it is clever of himself to name his identical twins after the other pair of identical twins, plus by using the nicknames, he will be able to keep the theme of giving all of his girls names that start with the A sound.

We were all too shocked to reply, so no one said a word as the twins ran over to Alice and Jasper, exclaiming in unison, "Hi Mom and Dad!"

'Stay back and out of their conversation,' Carlisle thought. 'Parents should be allowed to meet their children for the first time without the rest of us butting in. I wonder how they got here…'

'Masen, I agree. Will you pass the message along to the others?' I asked my son.

'Sure Dad,' Masen replied.

Kair picked Alice up, swinging her around in a circle. Even though the twins were clearly still juveniles, they were already taller than Alice. I could hear in their thoughts that they were only eleven hundred years old.

Kare jumped into Jasper's arms and I realized then that these two definitely take after Alice when it comes to disregard for personal space, especially that of strangers.

"What's going on?" Jasper finally managed to splutter. He was caught off guard, but Alice was completely blind because the decisions the girls were making would not happen until over a thousand years in the future.

"Oh, let us explain," said Kair, setting Alice down. "Dad always says we have to explain when we show up out of sequence."

"We're time-travelers from the future," Kare said relinquishing her hold on Jasper, and lowering herself back to the ground. "We came to help with your Volturi dilemma."

"If you can travel through time," Jasper wondered, "why didn't you come sooner? If you have the solution to our problem with the Volturi, then lives could've been saved."

"Well, we're not all-powerful time travelers. We each can only travel in one direction. I can only travel into the future and Kare can only travel into the past. We can also each only co-transport one other being and since we need to return to our own time, that means we can only take each other, or else we'll get stuck in time. And finally, we're limited to how far backwards or forwards in time we can travel," Kair explained.

"Kair can only travel forward one thousand years from our correct position in the timeline. I can only travel from our correct time to the year of our conception. I can push the tunnel further back and watch, but I just can't break through, so we're limited in time. This is the end of the line, if you will," Kare clarified.

"Okay, so how are we to solve our dispute with the Volturi?" Jasper asked.

"First things first," Kair insisted. "We can't help you if you don't agree to conceive and germinate us first, because if you don't, we won't exist."

"Alice?" Jasper asked his wife, leaving the decision up to her, because he was perfectly fine with the idea of having more kids. He never said it, but he was secretly pleased that he was getting his way, because he had always wanted more.

"Um, sure. When should we … um… conceive the two of you?" Alice asked. She was still disoriented from the complete lack of vision and the fact that she was looking at offspring she had not yet decided to have.

"We'll be conceived February twelfth, three hundred and sixty-four days in the future, exactly," Kare said. It was currently February thirteenth.

"Okay. I think we can manage to each swallow a zygote on that date," Jasper agreed.

"No, not both of you. We're identical twins. From _one_ egg. We both came from your stomach, Dad," Kair said.

"So, I don't swallow a zygote and we'll have two babies and not three?" Alice asked for clarification.

"That's right. Three babies are just too much," Kare answered. "Now about the Volturi."

"Allison already knows what to do; you just have to let her do it. She'll make a hydrogen bomb and drop in on Volterra and Aro, Marcus, and most of the rest of the Volturi will die in the flames. Jane won't be there at the time, but you'll get her later for future crimes," Kair stated calmly, as if she had not just proposed the dropping of a bomb on a human inhabited city.

"But that'll kill thousands of innocent humans! And it'll expose our kind, which is why Carlisle forbade it," Jasper replied shocked.

"And that's why twenty-two members of this revolution have been killed thus far. And think of all the human lives lost when the Volturi camped out at your door step. Did you know the Inuit race never recovered and died out completely as a result?" Kare retorted.

"And, the humans won't even notice our existence. A terrorist group from the Sudanese or something claims responsibility; it was something about New Ebola. Sorry Dad, we know how you're always going on about history, but you'll just have to live your own history and tell us about it, _again_, when we grow up. I really wasn't paying all that much attention the first hundred times," Kair added.

"Wait, let me get this straight. We drop a bomb on Italy, and the human terrorists take credit for it? And nothing bad happens at all?" Jasper asked.

"Yep. Oh, a few humans die and it starts a little war." Alice and Jasper give Kare an incredulous look. "Don't give me that look! They're gonna die and go to war anyway! The terrorist group really is planning on dropping a hydrogen bomb on Italy next month! All we're doing is changing the timing and location of the bomb so that the Volturi are killed. And, our bomb kills the terrorists, preventing them from dropping their bomb. We even save hundreds of thousands of lives by not dropping the bomb on a more populated area! The terrorists are gonna drop their bomb on Rome during some stupid human religious festival packed with humans."

"Okay, I guess that makes sense," Jasper admitted reluctantly, but he and Allison were the only ones completely convinced, because the rest of us were still concerned about potential ramifications and the loss of innocent lives.

"Good. Now Aiden will become Emperor of the Democratic Republic of Vampiredom and we'll all get to vote on what is and isn't legal and live in peace forever," Kair said.

"Well, if that's all, we'd best be getting off," Kare said.

"Oh and, Dad, we're sorry in advance for what happens when you're in para with us. It'll be an accident and we'll fix it, so don't worry or over react or anything," Kair added.

"What's going to happen?" Jasper asked concerned.

"Nothing really, you'll be fine. We'll all be fine," Kare replied dismissively. "Now the big thing is that we'll be moving in with you when you all move south to Canada. Future you said we can go to human school with the rest of our brothers and sisters."

"What? Won't you have to go home so we can see you in the future?" Alice asked.

"Sure, we'll go home at night, but during the day we want to go to human school. We don't want to go to school with Mett and Lilac anymore, because Mett is sooo annoying," Kair revealed, thinking about Rosalie and Emmett's youngest two children who were the same age as them.

Kare did not think Mett was annoying, because she thought he was kind of cute and his pranks were kind of funny, but she was willing to concede that her sister was right, because he had gone too far during a recent prank.

"Oh, and Ash and Scry, puns aren't funny," Kare said turning for the first time to her brother and sister, who were waiting silently off to the side watching intently.

"Yeah, and it's especially not funny to ask, 'How's the _air_ up there Kair?'" said Kair.

"Nor is it funny to asked, 'How _are_ you doing Kare?'" said Kare.

"And we don't want to go hang gliding when we're babies 'Son. We don't even particularly like hang gliding now," Kair said turning to Jackson, who was standing next to Allison a few feet away from Ashley and Scryan. "We also don't like snowboarding, skateboarding, skiing, or carpet surfing."

"Everything works out just like you said Ali," Kare said to Allison, before turning to face all of her siblings. "We'll see you all again soon and we can't wait until we're the same age and can go play together."

"Love you all, but we really got to get going," Kare added.

Alice and Jasper nodded and hugged their daughters and whispered, "We love you too," and then the twins linked hands and vanished into thin air.


	48. Epilogue

Epilogue:

Edward's POV:

And so we took the advice of Kair and Kare and let Allison drop her bomb. In the human world, the terrorists took credit, starting the sixth Sudanese War. The war lasted until the Sudanese finished speciating from the Classic humans, forming two species of humans, just as Alice had predicted. In the vampire world, the Volturi and their Guard were almost completely wiped out, with Jane being the one exception, because she had been out of the country at the time.

Jane slunk back into the shadows and the vampires looked here, to Cullen Island, for their new leaders. Kare and Kair had said that Aiden would be the leader of the new vampire government, but he was just a child, so Carlisle stepped up and initiated the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vampiredom, or the DRV. We all helped him set up the new democracy and were pleased when he was voted the first president of our new nation.

When we liberated the world from the tyranny of the Volturi, we introduced them to the wonders of eggs, hosts, and hatchlings. There were so many vampire eggs germinated in the first hundred years that we had a baby boom on our hands. The world became the type of hatchling friendly place where vampires would want to bring up children. The formation of the DRV ushered in a new era of peace for our kind and we even stopped genociding the werewolves; the real werewolves, not the half-shape-shifters.

Vampires all around the world decided to germinate eggs, including all of those that had been stored on our island during the war. Eleazar even decided to germinate the egg he conceived with Carmen before her untimely death, because they were the only couple that had opted not to use egg-control blood. They had not wanted eggs and had aborted two full sets of eggs, but once his mate was gone, Eleazar changed his mind and germinated his final egg.

Kate and Garrett decided to adopt the two eggs Tanya and Jason had left in flow cells. The eggs left behind by the many lost Amazonian coven members were adopted by Zafrina, Fernando, and the extended Amazonian coven that had remained in the Amazon during the war. Maggie and Sean adopted Caroline and David's eggs. And even the Cullen coven got into the adoption business, because Esme and Carlisle ended up adopting Benjamin and Tia's eggs.

Esme and Carlisle were not the only ones in the family with new children and in fact, Bella and I were the only couple without new children; we opted to spend our time focusing on our new grandchildren instead. Jasper and Alice had their twin girls, just as they had agreed to when Kair and Kare visited us that day. The big surprise was that Rosalie and Emmett decided to conceive eggs again to replace Rosita in the aftermath of the loss of their daughter.

The pureblood children baby boom was not the only post-war baby boom, because the hybrids were also taking advantage of the post-war era, now that they all knew that children were a possibility for them. All of the half-vampire slash shape-shifter couples decided to produce offspring. The half human, quarter shape-shifter, and quarter vampire offspring looked mostly human, but had a slight sparkle to their skin, grew more quickly than humans, and ten percent were venomous. And all of the hybrid offspring, including all of the females, began to shift when they came of age. Some of the hybrids retained the wolf shape and others possessed other shapes.

Leah and Nahuel were pregnant almost as soon as the hydrogen bomb was dropped. Leah stopped shifting immediately after Kair and Kare's visit, but it took her several months before she became fertile. Nessie and Jennifer got pregnant just as soon as we were sure Leah was pregnant, so the first three hybrid babies were all born within a month of each other.

Leah and Nahuel's first child was a little girl name Anaea, she took the shape of a tiger, and she had a talent for being charming. Seth and Jennifer had a daughter named Daniela, who transformed into a wolf with poisonous breath. Daniela was poisonous, but the other three were not. And finally Nessie gave birth to my first grandson, little Link, who turned out to be an archaeopteryx with the power of flight.

Link had Jacob's dark complexion, but a lot of Nessie's beautiful facial features. Bella and I were through the moon when he was born and we were determined to spoil him rotten during his very short childhood. We were progressing rather nicely towards that goal when Jacob decided it was time to pack his family up and move back to La Push. I almost killed him myself, because my grandson was only a few months old.

Link was about the size of a three year old when the hybrids left Cullen Island and it upset me greatly that his parents would do that to me and Bella, but I did understand why they left, which was the only reason I decided not to kill Jacob. Leah was pregnant already with her second child and she and Nahuel wanted to go back home to La Push to raise their children. The other hybrids agreed with them, but also wanted to get back home for political reasons, because they had been away from their tribe for long enough.

Jacob, as leader of the Quileutes, wanted to see his people through this difficult time, without them getting involved in the war with the Sudanese. Alice had warned against his involvement with the first Sudanese war and I had convinced him to follow Alice's advice. As a result, he had used his political power to convince the United States to withdraw from the war, several other countries followed suit, and the Classic humans were spared extinction from New Ebola. Now that the Classics and Sudanese were at war again, Jacob and Seth felt it was their duty to their people to return home and see that once again the United States stays out of the war.

And so I watched little Link go…

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Author's note: For those of you just finding this story and reading for the first time, reviews are appreciated. Even though this story is fully posted, I still like to know who has enjoyed my work, so if I made you laugh, cry, smile, or even cringe, drop me a note and let me know.


	49. Sequel Update

Author's Note: The sequel is now posted! It's called Bezoars of Yesterday and Tomorrow and picks up right where this story leaves off. It includes three story lines: rebuilding vampire society after the war, sending the hatchlings to human school, and Jasper's journey into the past with his twin girls. I hope everyone of you reads it!


	50. Chapter 5 Outtake

Author's Note: This outtake occurs after chapter five, but before chapter six, when Zikare and Zakaira are thirteen and attending middle school. Have you ever wondered just what Jasper did to scare all of the boys away from his hosts?

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Jasper's POV:

We were still living in the same town as we had been when Zikare and Zakaira were first adopted, but now I was an assistant history professor at the local University, while Alice was managing stock portfolios online. I really lucked out in getting a position at the same school that I had attended for my latest undergraduate and graduate degrees, but with all of my experience in the subject, they considered me a wonder kid and hired me without a second thought.

Alice did not actually have to be present at an office to do her job, so she was predominantly in charge of following the humans around to make sure they were safe. She was small enough to pass for a thirteen year old and enroll in school with them, but the locals already new that we had graduated high school fifteen years previously, so instead of going with them, she waited outside, hidden by the forest, and watched for any possible problems.

And since Alice watched them during the day, I took the afternoon shift and supervised all of their play dates with other humans. I tried to play the role of the cool older brother who was nice enough to give them a ride in his super cool car, because Rosalie had built me a custom souped up hotrod that both Emmett and Edward assured me was "banging."

Zikare and Zakaira's girlfriends bought my story, mostly because they all had crushes on me, but I had no such luck with their boyfriends. All of the boys in their grade were so afraid of me that they would not ask them out on dates. Not only that, but they would not even come over to our house to hang out, or be caught hanging out somewhere else when my girls were invited. So there never were any boys present on these play dates that I supervised.

The others in my family thought that the girls should have more interaction with boys and were happy and excited when boys started mustering up the courage to talk to them. The first boy that was brave enough to ask one of the girls out was a total prick. His name was Josh, and he was the only son of the richest human in town. His ancestors had actually founded this pathetic little town, and it was named after them, so he thought he owned the place. Maybe he did, but it did not give him the right to treat my girls like they were second class citizens.

Zakaira and Zikare were gorgeous princesses that deserved to be treated as such. Not only did they have the whole exotic and rich thing going on, but they were truly beautiful for humans. Their identical faces were perfectly symmetrical with high cheek bones and the straight button noises of the Chewa. Their teeth were bright white and perfectly straight, thanks to the latest invisible braces. Their lips were full, and their eyes and skin were as dark as ebony, contrasting beautifully with our own vampiric white skin.

And not only were my girls good looking, but they were geniuses as well. They were the smartest kids in their grade and were even skipped ahead in math one grade and all of their other classes were honors classes. They excelled in English and history, but math and science were their favorite. They had dreams and ambitions and were sure to grow up to leave lasting contributions to human society.

And they were not just smart and gorgeous, but kind as well. They had a gentle spirit about them that no one could help but admire. They were as perfect as humans got, and I felt that they should be treated with love and respect, especially by any potential suitors. Boys should be grateful to be in their presence and ecstatic for a chance of a single date.

They should not expect my girls to be subservient to them, like Josh thought of Zikare. He liked her because she was beautiful, rich, and exotic, not because she was smart, gentle, and kind. He was almost fourteen, and wanted a trophy girlfriend to show off to his friends in order to prove that he could have the prettiest girl in town on his arm. He wanted her to put out, so that he could have another notch on his bedpost. He wanted bragging rights.

Zikare wanted a first date with a nice boy, and maybe even a first kiss, if everything went well. So when Josh asked her to the movies, she said yes. She did mention that she would not be permitted to go alone, and that Zakaira and one of her older siblings would have to chaperone, but Josh agreed to that.

We had a family meeting on what to do about the situation, as I was freaking out, because this boy should not be permitted to be within a hundred feet of my human, much less hold her hand on her first official date. Edward read Josh's mind and confirmed that his intentions were not honorable. And my Alice saw that he planned on ditching the parental supervision after the movie and taking Zikare out into the woods.

But, Esme and Rosalie insisted that Zikare should be allowed to live her own life and make her own mistakes, so if she wanted to date this boy, she could, and there was nothing that I could do to stop it. But, they did agree that we could still keep an eye out for her and make sure that this boy did not get her into the woods. I tried to go along with the family's decision, honest.

If this boy's intentions were honorable, then Alice would have been enough to supervise the first date, but as it was, Alice and I both went inside the theater with them. I made sure to sit right next to Josh and I sent him as much fear, nervousness, apprehension, and indecision as I could without giving myself away. I was sure his stomach was swimming with butterflies and he even appeared to be having trouble keeping his popcorn down.

I also made sure that he knew that I did not like him, sending him my malice and disapproval during our greeting handshake. This boy should have pissed his pants just looking at me, but he was too cocky to notice his impending doom. He did however gulp loudly and give off panic. Close enough. Carlisle never said anything about making the boy feel uncomfortable.

I sat through what must have been the longest movie of my life and I kept telling myself that I could not harm this boy in front of the children. The only thing that kept me going was imagining scenarios in which I could harm him. He was practically a public figure, because he was the son of a rich local family, so he could not just disappear without a manhunt to find him. If it came to that, my family would have to move, and we really wanted to stay here until the girls finished high school, so his body would have to be found. But again, if his body was found after being murdered, a manhunt for his killer would ensue. It would have to look like a natural death, or an accident, or a suicide, or, maybe even an overdose.

I imagined scenarios for each of these. I could tell Alice knew what I was thinking about, because her eyes were glazed over in a vision. But, which one would work the best? The heart attack induced by an insulin overdose? The car accident when his driver's car hit a slick patch and lost control? The suicide because he was under too much pressure trying to live up to his father's expectations? The acid after having a fun night with the boys?

'Which one?' I decided to ask Alice.

"The quad accident," she replied back, whispering into my ear too soft for anyone to hear. And just like that this exercise went from a fun way to entertain myself to a plan of action.

"When?" I asked just as softly. Directly after he leaves us from the movies? Later tonight after being out with the boys? Tomorrow before school? Tomorrow after school? The possibilities were endless.

"Tonight after he goes drinking with his friends."

Ah, so he had access to a stash of alcohol. His old man probably left the good stuff out just begging for him to take. He would be so disappointed after his first date with Zikare was foiled that he would let loose with the boys and drink Daddy's Cognac. Then, he would get onto the quad that he had been given for his thirteenth birthday, which he was only allowed to ride on the grounds, and let loose some steam.

It would rain hard tonight. The tail end of a hurricane would pass by before petering out, but would drop enough water on the town to increase the odds of an accident. That combined with the underage drinking, and the humans would not even notice the lack of blood.

"They will notice. You can't bite him. You'll have to make the crash look real and break his neck," Alice whispered in my ear.

Great, no drinking him! How was I supposed to fling his blood around the place without losing control of my thirst?

"Hunt before going and hold your breath. You'll be fine: just think of Jackson."

Jackson. My son's life was at stake if Josh was allowed to hurt Zikare. I would do this for him and for Zikare, so I made up my mind not to drink the human and waited out the remainder of the awful movie with my wife by my side.

While I waited, my mind began to drift to what would happen afterwards. Carlisle had ordered me to leave the boy alone and let him be. My current plans were in direct violation of my Coven leader's orders. If he found out, he would make us move even if the humans were not suspicious.

"We won't tell," Alice's whispered, interrupting my thought process.

Alice and I would not reveal our plans to the others. We will have to guard our thoughts around Edward, but we had done it before. On several occasions we had decided not to tell our family members of my slips. If the accident was something that the two of us could cover up without anyone knowing, we would keep it between just the two of us.

I knew that I would be forgiven for my slips, and although it was embarrassing to be found weak, that was not why I hid my accidents. We had to move often enough as it was, without all of my slips added in. There were so many slips in my past that I had caused our family to move more times than any other member. I was the weak link and it was my fault we always had to move. So to minimize our moves, Alice and I would cover up some of my lesser slips. Carlisle did not understand that there was such a thing as a lesser slip.

"We'll take the girls home and then you can go over to Josh's house," Alice's whispers interrupted my thoughts again.

"Will he have friends drinking with him? I asked and she nodded. "Quading with him?"

"Yes, but it'll be dark and raining hard. At Eight thirty-two he'll be sufficiently separated from the others that they won't see. If you wait in the forest just north of the pond, you should remain hidden from sight and close enough to catch him when he's alone. I see you jumping on the back of the vehicle while it's still moving. You grab the wheel and crash it head on into a tree. You walk away unharmed, while his neck breaks. Not much of his blood spills, so you should be fine," she filled me in on the finer details of her vision.

Shortly after that, the movie ended, and with our plans for the evening finalized, we ended the date and took our humans home. I spent the next several hours thinking about my lecture plans for the next week, and grading midterms, in an effort to keep Edward out of my thoughts. I could tell Alice was doing the same because she pulled open her laptop and went to work checking her stocks.

After an hour, we announced that we were going to hunt, and no one was the least bit suspicious. I had not hunted since last weekend, and I have to cope with a lot of human interactions between my job and the pets, so I was in the habit of hunting every weekend; sometimes multiple times a weekend.

Alice and I left to prepare myself for the evening with Josh. I drank four deer, when I normally only drink three a week, but I wanted to take the added precaution of feeling extra full. After our hunt, she stayed in the woods on the outskirts of Josh's property, just in case something went wrong and I needed help.

I moved into position in the forest, by the pond, just as Alice had instructed, well before it was time. I waited there in the dark and pouring rain for twenty minutes before I heard the roar of the quads rip through the air. It was another half an hour before Josh separated enough from the other boys for me to execute my plan.

Everything went well, with Josh's neck snapping in a satisfying crunch, with his heart stopping only moments later, as the quad met the tree. But he hit a branch at such speed that it tore his jugular open, raining down blood all over me, just as I accidentally took a breath. No amount of animal blood could slake my perpetual thirst and prepare me for that smell. Alice saw it moments before it happened and began to run towards me.

I felt her panic as she approached, knowing that I had already begun to drink, but feeling her presence was enough to give me the power to stop myself mid-suck. It would not do for me to drink him dry, because this had to look like an accident. Sure there was already plenty of blood spilt on the forest floor, but there would need to be some left in his body.

So with all of the will power I possessed, I locked onto Alice's strength, and pried my mouth away from the gash on his neck. There would be no bite marks, because I had not bitten him. I had used the opening created by the tree branch to suckle his blood from his flesh. Alice reached me just as I looked up from the dead limp body. I jumped off of the crumpled quad, ran to her, and took her hand, as we disappeared into the night.

I had not drunk enough human blood to turn my eyes red and the four deer I had earlier drowned out the flecks of red from the human. My eyes may have had a tint of amber to the golden hue, but it just had the effect of looking like I had only drank two deer instead of the normal three. And Alice and I had enough practice hiding our thoughts from our brother that Edward and the rest of the family never found out that I was to blame for Josh's tragic quading accident.

Josh's accident made the front page of the local paper, and just as Alice had predicted, it was blamed on alcohol and the weather. Plus, there were four other boys in the woods that night who provided witnesses that it had indeed been an accident. The police chief did not even bother to call in forensics from the city to confirm that the quad had skidded out in the rain.

If they had, they would have noticed that there were no skid marks, and that I had had perfect control of the quad, up to and including when it went head on into the tree. But, if they had found that out, they would just have blamed it on the alcohol and underage driving. Who lets their thirteen year old drink and go quading during a hurricane? There was a serious lapse in parental judgment that would be blamed long before anyone would ever look to me or the Cullen family.

Zikare and Zakaira were devastated to learn of their friend's demise, but Alice and I took it as an opportunity to teach them a lesson about drinking and driving. The lesson was not, "Don't drink and drive or a vampire will drink you," but a more normal human warning. The twins really took it to heart, because neither of them ever drove drunk, ever.

And the next time around, when a boy asked Zakaira out, I went much easier on him. Sure I scared him off and he never came near her again, but he _lived_. That was a big deal for me and all that matters, is it not? Plus, I eventually managed not to scare all of the boys off once the girls got into college. Sure I could sense their emotions and knew that it was not true love, but it was human love, and Alice said that that was close enough.


End file.
